


Red Coals in Ash

by BoxWineConfessions



Series: After the Fire [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien technology telepathy, Angst, Character Death, In the form of flashbacks and dreams, Matt Holt - Freeform, Memory Loss, Other, PTSD, Pretty gen for a ship fic, Resurrection by magic, Sexual Content, coping with mental illness, implied klance, keith tells shiro to use his words, mentions of self harm, pov switching, some allura backstory, trans male pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-21 20:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7402516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxWineConfessions/pseuds/BoxWineConfessions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it was false it was going to hurt. </p><p>And if it was real it was going to end him all over again. What in the universe did he do to have that? More importantly, what did he do to lose that.</p><p>He gives Shiro the dream from the previous morning. He supplies every last confusing detail from the crisp of the sheets to the therapy light. He makes sure not to avoid the inebriating feeling of Shiro’s mouth. There. Despite the tug of shame from deep within that tells him to do so. The memory ends with them falling asleep with his entire form crushed into Shiro’s welcoming body. </p><p>They part, a deep blush splashed across both of their cheeks. He waits for Pidge to button his shirt, and uses the moment to regain some much needed composure. “That happened,”</p><p>**DISCLAIMER WRITTEN & FINISHED BEFORE THE SDCC Q's ABOUT AGE. WHEN I WAS WRITING THIS I WAS THINKING SHRIO: 21 PIDGE: 17.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to "After the Fire"

“Haggar,” Zarkon, lord of the known universe strides into the galactic witch’s lair. Several Druids scatter from her side across the sprinkled floor that acts as the map of the known universe. Darting into either corner of the great Druid forest, their long wine and midnight blue velvet robes billowing behind them. “Your reluctance to act is unsettling. The paladins have reconvened from the multifaceted wormhole. Voltron lives.”

“You underestimate me Lord Zarkon.” She speaks beneath her shroud and twists on her great onyx throne. “For I have not been idle.” Slowly she walks to the center of the room and dips her long skeletal arm into the cauldron she keeps there. It made of a deep rose gold colored metal and contains a vermillion substance that wafts between liquid and gas. She gathers some up in her hands and throws it across the floor erasing the map of the universe and turning the room near pitch black. From her robe she procures a handful of objects and throws them across the floor.

The room is re-illuminated in black, red, blue, green, and yellow light which originates from five orbs cast to the floor.

“I have already put into place an operation that is guaranteed to destroy the connection between Allura’s new paladins and prevent the further formation of Voltron. Once this occurs, the recapture of the lions shall be imminent.”

“This news pleases me Haggar.” He lets his own hand rest in the effervescent vermillion substance within the cauldron and let it was over his armored hand. “Tell me more.”

“Each paladin is blighted with an internal fatal flaw.” She spreads each hand wide and twists one on top of the other bringing the black orb forward. “The black one as you know is too caring, too giving and takes pain on behalf of others to his own detriment.” Another twist of the hands, and the blue orb is brought to the front. “The blue paladin is anxious to prove himself while simultaneously unsure of his own ability. It results in reckless behavior. While on the other hand the red paladin,” Haggar’s face is illuminated with a deep crimson light as she gazes intently into the corresponding orb. “Acts as a near opposite. So confident is he in his own abilities, he refuses to reach out for help. It results in a great deal of internal distress.” 

She switches orbs again, the yellow paladin. “This one is murky not unlike the bog of Chalbarah.” She fusses turning the orb over and over again. “The yellow paladin is caring for others yes, but this is not his fatal flaw. Perhaps, much like his lion he is so armored he never feels compelled to attack directly.” Finally she switches to the last orb, chartreuse in complexion. “Here is where it gets very interesting. The green paladin is arguably the least connected. There is a personal goal that jeopardizes the collective force which wills Voltron into existence. There is passion, to a point of obsession in reaching this goal. It is easiest to exploit, and thus the root of my plan created solely to honor your name Lord Zarkon.”

“You act not out of petty revenge Haggar?” He responds taking note of the strings that dart out from each orb in a corresponding color and connect to the others. He cannot help but notice that the black orb and the green orb have the thickest connection between them. “In targeting the green paladin you are directly targeting the black as well.”  

“No,” she speaks as she manipulates the orb from one palm to the next. “Why overcomplicate such a matter Lord Zarkon? This plan allows us to aim for the path of least resistance and tear them all apart in the process.”

Zarkon looks at her pensively for a moment before speaking. “As a unit they are strong, but individually they are weak.”

“Correct.”

“What exactly do you have in mind?”

Haggar passes the orb from her palm to Zarkons and then crushes it between their joined palms. Blinding chartreuse dust is scattered about recreating the once vanished map of the known universe. “I have already bait a trap for the green paladin. It is only a matter of time.”  

 

_Day of loss:_ 14:55

It takes three days to formulate the plan.

One and a half days for Pidge and Hunk optimize the lions and pour over their machine learning outputs from each one.

One for Shiro and Allura to draft a tactical plan, a back up plan, and alternative actions within each of those plans.

A half day for Lance and Keith to break their training drone due to nerves.

It takes twenty minutes for all plans, backups, and alternatives to be blasted, pulverized into dust, and left in the cold empty void of space.

Shiro knows a trap when he sees one. It’s cloaked in a Galra base stationed on an otherwise neutral planet. An uneasy alliance between people that did not want to be found, and people that did not want to lose everything. From the moment they’re able to orbit the planet with all five lions, he feels it. He doesn’t even need that dark primal part of his mind to tell him otherwise.

Shiro tells himself that he won’t allow Pidge to be blinded by a false sense of hope. He doesn’t expect to be lulled into the same type of fervor. However, Matt and Dr. Holt were his crew. He’s failed them in a way that can never be atoned for.

So he doesn’t pull back the team when he feels unease.

He doesn’t pull back when Lance begs him to do so. Or when Allura tells him to do so.

It’s the kind of impulsive decision he fights every day to abate. Somewhere in between infiltration of the base and storming the prison floor, he loses the yearlong battle and the diseased part of his mind takes complete control.

Somewhere between getting separated from the rest of the team and progressing onto the prison floor with Pidge, he loses everything. The prison floor is empty, save for the swarm of Galra agents shooting at them from all angles. It’s too much handle, even for his arm.

“Pidge!” between the alarm pounding in his ears and the laser fire all around him he can’t hear his own voice and has to go by the burn in the back of his throat to know that he’s saying _something._ “Pidge!”

Flashes of light from the alarm cloak the sterile off white prison sector in crimson red. He can’t see it but he knows it’s there. On the floor on the wall, on him covering his armor and covering Pidge. He doesn’t have to see it. “Pidge please,” he says through gritted teeth, trying his hardest to fight back the tears that prick at his eyes. Crying won’t do anything and he needs to keep some kind of shred of sense if they have any chance of making it out of here alive.

But Pidge’s face is cold to the touch.

And in between the pulses of the alarm light he can see that his face is pale.

There’s so much blood, and the wound in his chest is so big.

He thinks for a moment that he should hold him a certain way or try to find something to minimize the bleeding, but something twinges up his arm and every semblance of reason drains through his fingers. He grabs the small lifeless body before him and runs toward the black lion.

  He’s only fifty meters away when he’s ambushed. Galra drones swarm with blasters and beam sabers. There are at least twenty in front and he can hear the hollow footsteps of more from behind him. The final coherent thought he has is “where the hell are Lance and Keith and Hunk?”

He lights up his arm and takes out the one nearest to them with a touch to the shoulder. Two more with rapid jabs. Pidge lays unconscious over his shoulder all the while. He can do this. He can save Pidge. He neutralizes three more in a similar fashion.

More guards arrive, and more of them are able to get closer. They tear Pidge from his shoulder. No matter how many drones he thrusts his burning hand into, no matter how many hearts he can feel pulsing, slowing, and cauterizing in his grasp, he can’t shake them. Can’t get any closer. Can’t get to Pidge.

He kills for a lifetime. It feels like a lifetime, like all he’s ever known is death and when he’s done killing he’ll die too, because how is he ever going to get to Pidge?

Suddenly the purple pink glow of his arm is joined by flashes of blue, and red, and yellow. They’re yelling at him, and it takes him a moment to realize that Keith is flung over Hunk’s shoulder stabbing at whatever he can. Lance is worse for the wear too and there is blood dripping down his face and onto Hunk’s shoulder. It takes another moment to register that Hunk is carrying him piggyback style. He’s shooting over Hunk’s shoulder in sporadic bursts.

Despite all of his screams, protests, and empty threats that work in Galra arenas but don’t work among those that know him best, it’s Allura that drags him away. She drags him away while he’s screaming at the drones to take him instead. Allura that shoves him into the black lion’s cockpit and orders it to depart, as only she can. It’s Allura that boards the green lion.

_One day after loss. 23:06_

“I think it may help you Shiro.” Allura says with her hands clasped together. She’s trying to be strong for him, but there are more tears dripping down her swollen eyelids. “Not only in coping…”

Shiro touches the exterior of the pod. He knows that it’s _his_ pod. All of the other paladins have claimed one at this point, and they’re very protective of their pods. Apparently, if you soaked in a pod it smelled strongly of the person that was in it last. From what Coran tells him it’s not a problem among Alteans. However, it has been a problem among Lance and Keith who have decided that the smell of each other is “gross,” never mind the fact that Keith’s room sits empty most nights.

He wouldn’t know for sure. He’s had an intense reluctance to enter the pod. It reminds him too much of forced adjustments and unwanted procedures.

“It may also help him if he’s recovered,” Allura continues. “We don’t exactly know what state he’ll be in. Your memories may be particularly helpful given your closeness.”

“If it could help, I will give it a try Allura.” But he waits for her to leave the infirmary before he climbs, not into the unused pod in the center, but to the one directly to his left. The one that he knows he’s seen Pidge climb out of.

_Six days before loss: 03:02_

“Do you believe in the witching hour Shiro?”

Pidge pulls him from an ancient Altean fantasy novel that Pidge has been kind enough to outfit with translation software. He can’t say he minds. The complex sorcerer princess protagonist has become the victim of a  very dull and very cliché second arc. Reduced to a love interest…she’s so much more interesting than that. “That time of the morning where we’re more susceptible to magic and witchcraft?”

“Less of that…I don’t believe in sixty minutes where ghosts, demons, and other nasty stuff roams freely.” He pushes his glasses up his face. “This was more of a thing that happened during my time in the Garrison. There was always an hour or two where everything in the desert was so quiet, the sound of my own breath was deafening…Or the network went down for routine maintenance and I was stuck alone with my own thoughts.”

Shiro tries to take a moment to imagine Pidge without a data set to comb through, without a way to test if the code he’d spent hours on works. He’s always working on something. He decides he’s never witnessed it before and doesn’t know if he wants to. He can take Pidge wringing his hands or pulling at his cuticles in anxiety for a few moments, but the idea of seeing him truly idle seems absurd.  “Seems like almost any time on the castle could qualify that depending on which definition you favor.” Shiro offers.

“Yeah.”  Pidge takes a pause from the screen and rummages around in his bag. He procures two portions of Plambian candy from the dingy maroon vessel and tosses one to Shiro.

Shiro raises his eyebrows and smirks in amusement. “Are _you_ feeding me?” This week alone he’s brought Pidge breakfast three times. He also bought him lunch yesterday when they’d made a quick stop at an interplanetary rest area. He’d ordered the biggest plate of fried eggs and something that looked and tasted very much like bacon, but didn’t have a cent to his name.

Not that Shiro kept a mental note of when Pidge took his meals.

“But there’s some weird stuff going on out there at night lately,” he gestures to the observation deck just past his monitors. “Are you familiar with a Fibonacci sequence?” He takes the bar and tears at the wrapper with the corner of his mouth. Then spits out the corner and shoves it into his oversized pockets.

“Um…..” Shiro gestures in a round and round motion with his index finger. “It’s like a spiral right?”

“Kind of. You’re underselling it a bit.” He takes a bite of his candy and frowns. “Hey, did I give you the red bean flavor one?”

Shiro looks down at his yet to be touched candy. Although he cannot read a single word printed on the wrapper, all of the text is printed in red and that has to count for something. “I think so.”

“Trade me,” Pidge demands. “I thought I’d like the nut ones. Like maybe they’d be like peanut butter. They aren’t.”

“What if I don’t wanna trade?” Shiro responds.

“Oh come on Shiro. I’ve combed my hair today. It’s been,” he pushes up the sleeve on his tunic and checks his watch, “eighteen hours since my last shower, and now I’m trying to take care of you. Give me some credit here. I’m super nailing this self-care thing. So at least like, trade me candies.”

“You don’t get rewards for things you’re already supposed to do,” this is going to trigger a patented Pidge-eye-roll.  

Three, two, there it is! But he’s already bridging the distance between them.

He plucks the bitten bar from Pidge’s hand and replaces it with the red bean one he’d been given moments before.

“Thanks!” Pidge bursts into a wide grin.   “Anyway, they’re a sequence of numbers beginning with 1 and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. Based on that this can be applied to right triangles such that every second number starting with five is the hypotenuse of a right triangle. The hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the three sides in the previous triangle.”

Shiro chews for a moment in thought…”Pidge I have no idea what you’re saying.”

 “You don’t need to get the math behind it. That’s not important.” He cards a few fingers through his hair and looks back at the series of formulae on his screens. “What is important is that someone is broadcasting a series of such triangles at regular intervals. Matt and I were obsessed with Fibonacci triangles when we were younger. “

Shiro’s face lights up in an instant and then scowls “So this kind of transmission is a pattern that is rare, probably not a coincidence?” He says with a tinge of hesitation in his voice. He not only shares Pidge’s optimism that his family is out there, but he must consider the alternatives.

Pidge deflates slightly and tilts back in his office chair. The candy is forgotten on the left end of the console. “I don’t know. These sequences do occur naturally.  Queen bees give birth to drones and workers in such a sequence. But….And this is where it gets weird. We were obsessed with this one constellation. It wasn’t a real constellation, but one we made up. Based on distance estimates from our dad’s lit we figured out that,” takes a moment to pull up a holographic map of  the known universe and scrolls until he’s hit the local group. “these three stars the hypotenuse here is five….million lightyears give or take. And then these three adjacent stars,” he gestures to his left “ act as the next right triangle following the sequence, and so on and so forth. We spent so much time looking for others, but this was the only one we found.”

“That’s the sequence being submitted.” It’s not a question. Pidge wouldn’t bring it up if he hadn’t already buried himself in all the information available, and weeded out possible alternatives.

“Yes,” Pidge concludes.

“Did you ever think about how weird it is for two kids to be obsessed with triangles?”

“Nerd dad plus nerd mom equals two nerd kids Shiro. Its basic biology” Pidge laughs into the back of his tunic covered hand.”

“So if Matt were trying to reach you in a way that were innocuous, this may be it?”

“I don’t want to get my hopes up. But I do need to investigate this further.”

“How can you know for sure?”

“The sequence will hold the answer. I’ve sent out another one of my favorites in response. If one of Matt’s comes back in response, I think it would be worth a closer look.”

“I think so too.”

  _Four days before loss_ 0 _7:45_

By the time Pidge rises from his lair and joins him for breakfast, he’s been up for several hours. He’s had time to get dressed, complete his morning workout, and have a shower. It’s almost strange that Pidge is up this early. He usually doesn’t wander into the galley until lunch time, or Shiro will bring him a bowl of the green stuff after he finishes pouring through status reports and compiled statistical analysis from Pidge and Hunk from their last battle.

Pidge plops down next to him with a mug of something that is both hot and brown and therefore according to all heuristic clues, must count as his morning dose of caffeine. He lets his head drop onto Shiro’s shoulder before finally asking, “This okay?” Because somewhere within their nebulous commitment to one another, one thing was made very, very clear. Everything, especially physical contact, had to take a pause.

“It’s fine,” Shiro responds in a disinterested tone before going back to his screens. “Thank you for streamlining the tactical data from the lions. It makes running simulation analysis much easier for me to understand.”

“It only took me-“ Pidge yawned in the middle “A few minutes. So, if you need anything else like that-“ his voice trails off.

“I have something for you.” He shuffles around his tactical log and computer until he found a black usb stick. It had a small lion insignia on it. “Here. It came across the main receptor immediately after I took you to bed.”

A small blush crept over Pidge’s face as it was confirmed that Shiro had tucked him in last night.

“It’s encrypted. I don’t understand it. But given what you were working on last night it’s probably of interest.”

Pidge’s sleepy demeanor shifts from near comatose to wide awake. He pulls a small tablet from his tunic pocket and plugs in the usb drive. Nearly immediately he began tapping frantically at the screen. “Oh, wow…” Pidge taps on. “This is really good Shiro.” Pidge rises without further warning and turns. The screen still buried near his face the whole time, he abandoned his coffee in order to type with his free hand. “I have to go…I need more power to decrypt this.”

“Morning Pidge,” Keith says as they cross each other’s paths in the threshold to the galley.

“Huh.” Pidge blankly looks up. “Oh, Keith. Hi.” He blinks a few times. Suddenly his eyebrows shoot into his forehead. “Come find me later. I have a new training module for you. I keep forgetting to send it to you.”

“Sure thing. Thanks Pidge.”

Keith seats himself at the table and places his palm flat on the counter. “So we should send someone in later with a toothbrush and a damp washrag before bed tonight?”

“Wouldn’t be the worst idea.”

“We’ll do it on three,” Shiro tells the team.

“One two three shoe,” Lance insists.

“Shoe, what are you even talking about?” Keith replies.

“Shoe is when you just need that extra…That extra minute to decide,” Hunk adds.

“That’s for rock paper scissors,”

“We’re going on three,” Shiro decides.

“One. Two. Three.” The four present paladins touch their noses to their index fingers as quickly as possible. This time, Hunk comes up the loser.

“Aw man.” Hunk mumbles under his breath. There is a big big difference between sitting next to Pidge for hours on end working on your own projects and occasionally asking questions (although not too many) and forcing him to engage in self-care. The latter may result in thrown project components, swearing, or even worse, being recruited to “hold something” further distracting from the task at hand.  “Fine.” He grabs the carry case of supplies and shuffles towards the lab.

Abruptly, the doors to the lab are thrown open and Pidge races out, knocking into Hunk’s chest and nearly send him toppling backwards. Although he manages to steady himself the supplies are not so lucky.

“Team meeting! Team meeting!” Pidge calls urgently his helmet already in his hands. His determined affect shifts to one of surprise as he sees the rest of the team closer than he anticipated. “Good you’re all already here. Inside. Now.” He gestures back into the lab.

They all shuffle in without protest.

He calls Allura and Coran into the room via intercom and soon the lab is packed full. Lance and Hunk are seated on the floor. Keith’s occupying Shiro’s usual spot at the main console so he’s stuck in the back corner.

Pidge quickly brings them up to speed on the transmissions he’s been receiving for the past few nights. Then reveals the new information that Shiro shared with him that morning.  “In addition to the triangular coordinates I keep receiving, an additional transmission was received last night at 04:37. It’s encryption is very unique. Written in a code in a language that is all but archaic on Earth. It was essentially designed to communicate ultra violet maintenance waves to and from satellites.”

He can feel six faces drop in fear of a tangent without even looking up for his monitors.

“My father developed it as a part of his dissertation.” After he speaks the rancor drains from the room. He lets it build into a deafening crescendo as he displays the decoded transmission on the screen.

_“K, Follow the sequence. –M_

“As you can see,” He slouches forward and leans into the words. The screens filling his lenses with their fluorescent glow. “The circumstantial evidence has suddenly become very concrete. I brought you all here to ask for your help.”

“Were you able to pinpoint the coordinates?”

Pidge’s mouth pulls into a half smile. He probably already knows that he’s got a skeletal outline of a plan in his head. “Yes, further analysis of the sequence has revealed a concise set of coordinates.”

“It could be a trap Pidge,” Keith supplies from her left.

“Didn’t you listen to anything he just said? We have to do something,” replied Lance.

“It could very easily be a trap,” Shiro interjected. “But if these signals are legitimate, then the only way a rescue is feasible is as a team. I’d wager almost anything that Pidge has already decided to go alone if we are unable to do so together. Something amazing happens when we all work together, so let’s take the time to make an airtight plan.”

_Three days before loss: various hours_

It takes three days to formulate the plan.

One and a half days for Pidge and Hunk optimize the lions and pour over their machine learning outputs from each one.

One for Shiro and Allura to draft a tactical plan. And a back up plan, and alternative actions within each of those plans.

A half day for Lance and Keith to go over the plans so many times they work themselves into a perpetual state of restlessness, and break their training drone due to nerves.

It takes four hours to get Pidge to go to bed for a few hours before they depart.

“What if they’re different when we get them back?” Pidge asks clutching a pillow against his chest. “I mean they’re going to be different. No one stays the same. They’re not going to be the same after….” Pidge taps against the frames of his glasses, adjusting his ocular display. “One year, nine months, two weeks, and three days,” his voice trails off a bit at the end.

“You’re scared.” Shiro pauses sit ups on the floor in between Pidge’s primary work bench and Hunk’s frequently empty drafting table. It’s such a painfully obvious thing to say, but among a group of people that have all but last everything, sometimes dealing with your own emotions is hard.

Pidge’s own emotions seem to be so often encrypted similarly to his programs. Taking the time to try to crack that code was of the utmost importance, even if he didn’t feel like he had the skill or emotional competence to do so. After all, Pidge validates so many of his own emotions in his own strange way.

Not to mention that this mission is weighing heavy on his own conscious as well.

Pidge acknowledges this by talking him through the statistical analysis he runs. He’s used multiple linear regressions to pinpoint the location within a 99.5% confidence interval. Much like his and Allura’s tactical plans, he’s accounted for error and controlled for as many factors as possible. To Shiro it means two things. First, Pidge has drafted a very intricate line. Second, there is so much that can go wrong in one half of one percent.

Pidge tells him stories of Matt and Sam, and the whole time he wonders if he should be doing more to comfort Pidge.

“It’s so foolish though Shiro,” he says after a few silent clicks. “I’m not afraid of getting hurt, or falling into a trap. I’d feel bad if anything happened to anyone on the team….” Pidge looks up from the monitor on his left. It’s held his attention for the better part of the last hour, and it bears the simple message, ” _K, Follow the sequence. –M”_

“But the thing I’m most afraid of is coming back, not just empty handed but no closer than I was before I started getting the messages.”

“Well….” Shiro sits up properly and scratches at the back of his undercut. “That’s almost impossible at this point right?”

Pidge knits his brows together and waits for further explanation.

“What is it you told me? There are..” He touches each finger on his biological hand to his thumb and then touches his forefinger and middle finger to his thumb on his cybernetic arm and counts softly to himself. “Seven ways of knowing?”

“Eight,” Pidge corrects.

“Oh,” he murmurs in slight embarrassment. He really though he was going to impress by remembering this accurately. “Which one am I missing?”

“Probably sense perception,” Pidge supplies. “It seems so obvious compared to the rest.”

“Right.” He offers in response. “Well okay you have emotion and faith telling you its them. You have intuition based on the data…All the ways of knowing are pointing to this being legitimate. So, now you really have to empirically test it.” He’s afraid that he sounds like an entry level Garrison decision making textbook, and not someone who is legitimately concerned. “After this is tested, you will know undoubtedly for sure, and it will shape your future actions.”

“I suppose so,” Pidge offers.

“It’s late,” He pauses and looks up at Pidge at his workbench. Waits for Pidge to feel the tinge of being watched from the corner of his mind and meet his gaze.

After a few moments Pidge does just that.

“You should get some rest.”

Pidge retracts his fingers from the keyboard to his left. He taps gently on the keyboard for his right before retracting himself once more and returns to Shiro’s gaze once again. “I don’t know if I can. I’m too anxious.”

“Don’t allow your mind deprive your body.”

“Am I breaking the rules of our contract if I ask you to sleep next to me? For old time’s sake. It’s the only time I’ve ever felt rested since…since….”

“I never signed a contract Pidge.”

He furrows his brow in frustration. “You know that’s what I mean, Shiro.”

Although the contact has changed, the sleeping arrangements have changed, some things have never changed at all. He still cannot for the life of him say no to Pidge.

Pidge grabs his pillow from underneath the desk and trudges towards a pile of pillows and blankets in the far corner of the room.

“In here?”

“I never sleep in my room. That’s where I keep books I don’t have time to read. When you carried me in there the other night, that’s the first time I’ve slept in there in months.”

“Fine,” He sighs. “I get my own pillow.”

“You’re going to have to go get it from your room then. I require no less than three pillows for a proper nap.”

 

 _One Hour After Loss:_ 17:13

He catches sight of himself in the reflection of the regeneration tank he places Lance in. And again in the regeneration tank that Allura drags Keith into. And a third time when he walks to the tank that Hunk climbs into. It’s a good sign that he’s able to do it himself. His wounds are largely superficial. He’ll be out in a half hours time.

Every porous surface of his armor is covered in blood. Even the plated parts are covered in large smudged blotches. How was he one of the only ones uninjured? How, when it was he that allowed the compromise of his team’s safety?

He leans against the empty tank next to Hunk. The tank that should’ve contained Pidge. He feels a hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll get him back Shiro.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flashback sex, and Keith tells Shiro to use his words.

“My dear. My dear.” Hagar clucks under her breath, gravely and hard. Suspended above her was Pidge’s lifeless body. Hagar twisted her dark leathery hands and moved Pidge toward the cauldron of orange pink quintessence in the middle of the room. “What have they done to you? Those brutes know not what they nearly destroyed.”

The quintessence rose upward slowly. At first it formed a thick cylindrical base. Gradually it branched out into smaller tendrils and then further still into smaller string like capillaries. The veins stretched out across Pidge’s lifeless body and covered it in an intricate lace like webbing.  “You’re useless if you’re dead.” The webbing pulsed, each throb draining the quintessence. Gradually it went from pink to orange to blue until finally its sparkling brilliance was dulled to gray. “It seems something extra is needed. Gartlar!” She barked.

“Yes, M’lady.” A druid divulges himself from the shadows. His long swishing robes drowning out the sounds of the quintessence crackling and spurting over the green paladin’s lifeless form.

“It seems that death has thoroughly embraced this one. Fetch me some Aab-i-Hayat as well as some sacred metals.”

In an instant the materials appear from within Gartlar’s dripping sleeves. He presents them to Hagar with a bowed head.

She accepts the materials. “Oh, and Gartlar, I want you to find and kill whomever killed my newest pet. If no one accepts, kill the entire squad that was in the same sector as the Green and Black paladin.”

“Yes m’lady.” He turns to leave.

The witch turns back to the body in front of her. “You are so damaged, you shall never be a great warrior. Shall never compare to him.” She takes the carafe of water in her hand and palms the orb of metal in the other. “Your form can only be improved upon so much in death….But no matter. It is your mind that shall serve Lord Zarkon, not your body. And the fact that you live, even in death shall bring them ruin.”

“Metal of Glarn fill the heart of this fallen bird.” The malleable metal shifts and twists from Hagar to Pidge’s lifeless form. It fills the hole in his chest and covers it with a glowing silver light. “Water of Hayat, breathe life into this mind.” She raises her arms slightly although they are concealed in gold and robe. “Mend this body, and progress it so that may honor Lord Zarkon as the orbs have destined.”

The drained quintessence is pulled away and both substances whirl around the body. Finally the metal pads the hole in Pidge’s chest. He’s lowered by virtue of Hagars wringing hands. “Green paladin of Voltron, to who does your alliance lie?”

Pidge looks at the witch through cracked and bloodstained glasses, but says nothing.

“This is no time to be Ill mannered. The recently dead should be grateful and malleable.” She pauses for a moment eyeing her newest creation up and down. “No matter. You soon will be.”

_Days since loss: 1-95(extraction)_

Shiro longed for the day that dreams of Sendak and looming over him would end.

He was so tired of his cold orange red eye zeroing in on him as he lays among countless bodies on the arena floor. Some nights he knows the names and faces of each one. Other times they are lost to him, although he doesn’t doubt that in a previous life he knew all of them.

Sometimes the faces are his crew members from the Kerberos mission. More frequently, they are his fellow paladins. His more recent failure refusing to succeed from the forefront of his mind even for a moment.

His previously guarded steps into the center ring proudly, but refuses to end things quickly. Sendak reveals himself his arm glowing. In this iteration he rips Shiro’s prosthetic from his body. A shower of sparks fly across both of them as he screams out in agony.

Sendak’s stance is wide, his stride is long. He refuses to end things there. Instead he beckons for the arena guards. As he’s dragged away Sendak tells him, “We are one in the same.”

Tonight is a variation on a similar theme.

Tonight he’s confronted by Zarkon for what feels like the millionth time. His shoulders droop and his muscles burn. The weak part of his mind wants to give in to the death that he knows is imminent. The other part fights on in futility. His hand dims gradually from a blinding glow to a dull purple.

He’s covered in blood. It takes little explanation to understand whose it is or why it is there. It’s on his hands and his face and his suit. When he tries to rid himself of his armor it is there too covering every inch of his skin and flooding the black lion’s cockpit. If he’s unfortunate enough to make his escape in this dream, Zarkon will also invade the recesses of his mind and tell him, “We are one in the same.”

Other times, Zarkon ends him with the black bayard. He transforms it into a simple dagger, stabs, twists, and watches him intently as he bleeds out.

Shiro longs for the days that these dreams end, but when they do they ultimately promise no rest. Since Pidge’s loss he’s tormented by visions of direct confrontation.

These meetings start out as if nothing were out of the ordinary. He’ll tell Pidge, “You need to eat something,” when they inevitably run into each other after everyone else on the castle has had lunch. Or “your stance is too wide and limits your mobility,” on the rare occasion Pidge follows him into the training deck without a project in tow.

In these dreams Pidge will say something snarky in response. He’ll shake his hair onto his face desperately trying to hide the grin that pulls at one side of his face and then simply cannot be stopped at the other. Attention given to Pidge is rarely wasted. He languishes in it like a large photosynthetic Malesian lizard in the sun.

These moments never last.

In these dreams the pastoral calm that ebbs and flows between them is always sharply interrupted by Pidge turning towards him and telling him, with the biggest grin on his face saying, “You killed me.”

Or burying his face deep in his neck and breathing hotly against it, “why did you let me die?”

In each of these, the blaster hole in Pidge’s chest is filled in with a dense brilliant metal. It’s covered in Galra symbols, and its surrounded by scar tissue.  The panel glows purple much like his arm when he reaches out to touch it.

Unfortunately, these aren’t the worst.

He’s used to waking up with a glowing arm and burned sheets. He’s used to burning himself with said arm after flailing around. The screams, the cold sweats, and the shakes. These are all things that can be temporarily remedied with late nights on the training deck, or talking to Hunk or Lance, or talking at Keith. The latter of which may provide the best solutions. Instead of forced advice he’s confronted with an uncomfortable silence which makes him _really_ think about what’s going on.

Or better yet….

Simply sitting next to Pidge unnoticed. Suddenly, Pidge realizes he’s not and goes right into boyfriend mode. Delayed, but the best kind of comfort he’s ever known. Pidge will pull a handkerchief from his pocket and softly tell him to dab the sweat away, will do it for him if he’s too shaken to hold a coherent thought in his head. 

Then he’ll order Shiro to lay his head in his lap. His short clipped nails rake over his scalp and his adroit hands dig into his shoulders relieving the tension there. Sometimes, if Pidge is in a really good mood, he’ll hum old Earth folk songs in an off key tune because he, “doesn’t actually know any of the words.”

Simply having this kind of unconditional affection showered upon him acts as a stark reminder that he’s still able to do something right.

Unfortunately, these days are over. Sometimes the nightmares fade into something that’s almost pleasant. These are the ones that shake him to the core and leave him breathless.

Some nights they’re recovering the green lion. They barely know each other and yet they know so much. It’s downright strange how much he wants to trust Pidge immediately. At this point, he shouldn’t want to trust anyone so urgently, and yet he does.

Then he’s holding him for the first time. He’s known for so long, but the name Katie feels so foreign and out of place on his tongue. In a few weeks’ time, another confession will come from Pidge, and he won’t have to worry about how strange it sounds to hear that name roll off his tongue.

Inevitably his dreams take him back to Roest. He goes back to Pidge, nearly half his size taking up at least 70% of the bed’s surface area. He thinks of Pidge’s insistence that he would cook them a meal. Shiro was wincing before the pan could even hit the range.

He dreams of Pidge’s laugh, which is varied and complex. There’s the chuckle that’s reserved or inappropriate situations. Or, the soundless laugh which is delivered through a smirk, single raised eyebrow, and downright evil glint in the eye. Finally there is the chuckle. It’s deep and robust and something that cannot, should not be able to be contained in such a small body, but somehow is. Pidge’s laughter was something not unlike a rare gem to be extracted in the strangest and most inappropriate of conditions. It was there, under the poor conditions of Roest that he did it so freely.

_Days since loss: 86_

_Days before extraction: 9_

“Shiro,” Although he can’t quite see what’s going on he could never mistake that touch. A touch that was gentle enough to soothe like salve to his scars and roughly calculated enough to cause every nerve in his body to scream with need.

He catches Pidge’s shoulders and neck in his arm before he can scrape it across the abrasive red rust. It causes a painful slow sting on his knees and exposed elbow, but it doesn’t _ache_ like the current situation between his legs. Never the less, he cannot bear to stand the thought of Pidge’s smooth freckled skin bearing such irritation.

“Pidge, are you hard for me?” Finally he touches him there grabbing roughly the place where flesh meets fiction.

“Yes,” he whispers like a prayer. “God yes.” Their mouths join again for what must be the hundredth time that day.

“More Shiro. I need more than this. Please.” Pidge is so used to getting exactly what he wants. So often it happens that they both want exactly the same.

Shiro takes a moment to pause and take a long hard look at him. Peels away the heavy layer of lust which rests between them and forces him to bare his soul under his gaze. “Are you sure?”

“Were you physically or emotionally present when I had my hands down your pants last night? It sure seemed like you were considering how much you were begging me, ‘please.’”

“Now you’re just being greedy.” Shiro chides. “Maybe you should try it…Saying please.”

Pidge grinds upward and begs without preamble. “Please Shiro.”

At his utterance Shiro goes for the button on his pants, zips downward and shucks them off. Pidge raises his hips slightly so they easily slide down past his ankles.

Pidge pulls at his pants with a similar urgency and Shiro helps him pull them off.

_This is where dream separates sharply from reality._

In the past, Shiro had looked down at Pidge’s exposed form. Then his gaze shot to his eyes and back again with a look of surprise and discomfort. He’d forgotten for a moment that Pidge was only psychologically hard for him. He wanted to minimize any kind of discomfort Pidge might feel in response to being this exposed.

His skin goes cold and clammy even as the heat of the noonday suns bear down on him. He can see the inches between them grow as he inches back. He’s thinking about Pidge’s discomfort, and quiznack forbid pregnancy.

_In the present, that’s far too seamless to be real, Pidge has anatomy which matches his gender_.

“You want this?” Shiro murmurs.

“You seem to think that this is what I’d want. Seeing me like this will make you feel better,” Pidge responds.

  “You don’t have to. I want you regardless.”

“I know,” Pidge replies. “But we both know this isn’t real. So why not go for it?”

 

_Days since loss: sixty-six_ 04:43

Shiro wakes up in his bed: cold, alone, and drenched in sweat. He’s used to waking up alone. They’ve slept apart since their rescue. He’s used to waking up with pain in his arm. It’s only intensified since Pidge’s loss. He floats for a few minutes in bed in a state of confusion. The pain only hits him when he trudges down to the lab and the lights are off. The nest of blankets and pillows are unoccupied, as are the numerous monitors and consoles. It’s only here that it truly affects him. Shiro doesn’t cry. Not a proper cry like Lance that’s heartfelt and unyielding. The only thing he has to compare it to is the way _Pidge_ cries, pained and concealed as if each drop must be torn from his body because he’s so damn afraid to feel.

Tonight, much like so many other nights he finds himself wandering down to the lab. He stares despondent at the abandoned equipment and unfinished projects. He always thinks that coming here will make him feel better. In the end, wrapping himself in one of the spare blankets from Pidge’s lab nest make him feel more confused. The yearning crests as does his sadness, and he doesn’t have the energy to do anything about it when he’s too fatigued to do anything, but too restless to sleep.

Tonight he settles for running a finger over the dingy _Garfield_ child’s comforter in confusion (Garfield is, according to many people they meet in their travels, the single most impactful piece of Earth culture to influence the universe).

Keith enters the lab and looks like he’s lost. A wave of discomfort washes across his form as he slinks in with weakened posture and a confused look on his face. He looks like he shouldn’t be in here without Pidge’s permission, and even if he had Pidge’s permission, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. “Shiro.”

He speaks gently, but Shiro has been aware of his presence since the pneumatic sweep of the doors were activated via motion sensor and broke the silence.

Keith joins Shiro at the observation deck. Shiro can feel the heavy tension the other man carries with him at all times.

Regardless, Keith takes a pause to choose his next words carefully. He seems to know that shouting whatever he’s feeling isn’t the answer, but he’s not quite sure what the correct one is.

“You don’t have to treat me like I’m made of glass Keith.” Nobody expects him to immediately assume the role of captain again after the failed mission, but he has let so many things fall by the wayside in the following days. His hair is unkempt and unshaven, his lion sits alone and unused. It cannot be much of a secret that he spends much of his time shuffling around the lab like he’s lost.

It’s no secret that he spends much of his time shuffling around the lab like he’s lost.

“Okay fine.” Keith turns to him and places a hand on his shoulder. The kind gesture acts as preparatory soothing touch to soften the blow Keith delivers next. “Pidge meant something to all of us. Stop acting like you’re the only one that’s affected or the only one that’s afraid.”

“Just talk to us Shiro,” he adds. “It will make things better.”

Shiro pulls away. He makes his way over to the console where Pidge did a majority of his work. He turns on one monitor, then the next, and then finally the third. Each monitor still displays Pidge’s work, and the resulting light illuminates his face.

“You wanna know? I can’t stop thinking about how I’ve so consistently failed someone who has given me so much.”

“Yeah.” Keith leans back against the observation portal and closes his eyes for a moment. “What else?”

“Yeah is there a reason we’re here and not knocking each other around in the training bay?”

“What is it you’re always telling me?” Keith smirks slightly and tries to hide his face in the shadows. “The increased adrenaline of training isn’t a substitute for the wide range of other possible emotions? Doing so would be really redundant”

Shiro can’t help but let out an exhausted sound that’s halfway between a sigh and a chuckle. He never thought he’d live to see the day that Keith of all people would be telling him to talk through his emotions.

“There are a lot of things I didn’t get to say…Or say often enough.” He shifts his weight from one foot to another and stretches his calf muscles. He never considered just how private these feelings were. It felt wrong talking about Pidge like that considering how private they’d both been. “I’m afraid of what’s out there too.”

“He’s alive isn’t he?” Keith insists in an impatient tone. It pulls Shiro from his thoughts of Galra symbols etched into metal. The image of Pidge with a large metal plate in his chest burned into his consciousness.

“He’s contacting you right?  Whatever tech he has now is able to reach out to reach out to yours.”

“How do you know this?” his voice is shaky. He can never get used to Keith’s unworldly ability to come to impossible solutions.

“Nothing concrete. Just a feeling. Lance has woken up in cold sweats now twice yelling Pidge’s name.”

“Sounds like a natural response to losing a close friend,” Shiro replies mostly in an effort to keep himself grounded. He refuses to let false hope hurt his team further.

“He’s seen him with a strange metal plate in his chest.”

At that Shiro goes rigid. They’ve all been affected by Pidge’s loss. It would make sense for anyone on the ship to be affected, but this kind of information danced on the border of purposeful and coincidental to the point that he knew he wouldn’t be able to let it go. “We don’t even know if he’s alive,” and almost redundantly he adds, “ It could so easily be the same vein of Druid magic that was used the first time to falsify those coordinates and message.”

“I don’t think the message was false. I think Zarkon just allowed that one to get through.”

They go silent for a moment.

“We’re all willing to try to stage a rescue Shiro.”

“I know, but I don’t know if I can risk the team like that again.” He turns back to the observation window and places his hand on the transparent barrier. “We don’t even know where he is.” It would be naive to assume that they’d kept him there.

“Where is it telling you to go?” Keith asks gesturing to his prosthetic pressed against the glass. “Where is he telling you to go?”

_Days since loss: 92_

_Days before extraction: 3_

Being defenders of the universe was a task without end. This meant that people still needed to be liberated, Galra ships still tried to intercept and attack, and there was very little time to grieve properly. Although they were down a paladin and very close friend, coming together again as a team was imperative to their continued survival.

All five lions fly in formation against the dirty brown gray sky. They don’t choose large uninhabited asteroids for the scenery. The neutral territory combined with the rubble strewn terrain made for excellent practical tactics. The formation is perfect. He can feel the black lion’s energy surge and begin to pull the other four together.

And just as abruptly as the feeling washes over him, there’s a flash of green in his field of vision and all five lions scatter.  Although the red lion is known for being temperamental, it is the green lion that has become indignant and uncooperative.

“Allura I need more,” Shiro growls over the open channel and he can simultaneously feel four people cringing in their cockpits. It’s the closest thing that any of them will ever hear to him being angry at his team.

There’s no time to apologize because Allura fires back giving back everything he’s shouted at her and more. “It doesn’t want me here Shiro! I cannot control it as I did during the mission. It knows we’re not in immediate danger, and it demands to know where Pidge is.”

He can feel a wave of emotions wash over him. Intense and unbridled feelings of loss and sorrow are similar to what he feels, but not his own. These feelings of loss and pain and betrayal are thousands of years old and bear the weight of the universe. They belong to the black lion.

The black lion strides, independent of Shiro’s control over to the green lion. She emits a deafening roar, but the green lion refuses to submit. As the lion’s cry tapers off, Black crumples into a low humble bow.

Pidge is gone. Matt and Sam are gone. Pidge is gone, but that doesn’t mean he can’t begin to try to make some kind of penance. “Pidge is gone Green,” he mummers unsure if it transmits over the channel let alone to the green lion.

This time the green lion roars. It lacks the confidence and volume of the black lion, but nevertheless cries with wild abandon. It roars and roars and roars until Shiro’s ears ring.

Black opens the exit hatch and Shiro exits out her mouth. He runs the few hundred feet over to the green lion so it can see him fully, not as the black lion, but as the failed black paladin. “Pidge is gone, and it’s my fault.” His voice waivers slightly. “I won’t ask you to forgive me, but I will ask that you give Allura a chance to prove herself. I can’t even begin to redeem myself without her help.”

The green lion bows now too so that her face is close to his dwarfing his bulky frame and roars from deep within. It echoes across the arid turf of the asteroid and stirs up large pillowing clouds of dappled gray black dust. It blasts over his skin into his helmet and deep into the crevices of the spacesuit. The deafening roars continue until Shiro is reduced to nothing but asteroid dust and the heavy ache in his heart.

Just as soon as it begins Green goes still.

Under her own volition black moves forward, it towers over Shiro and goes to the green lion. The black lion nuzzles the green lion and although the action is tinged with tenderness, sparks fly across their forms.

“It’s time.” Shiro orders over the channel as the lions part.

“I’m definitely not crying again,” Lance says over the comm.

“I’m totally crying again,” Hunk admits.

Keith opts for a more reserved “Roger Shiro.”

Shiro reenters the cockpit and moves the rest of the team toward formation. . First in five perfect parallel jet streams. Shiro stays forward while Keith and Allura dart to either his left and right. Lance and Hunk pulling back. Black begins to pull them together, and for the first time in nearly a month they are in unison as Voltron.

The corner of Shiro’s dust covered mouth tugs into a begrudging half smile. He cannot match the sounds of his team whooping over the comm. He cannot feel truly absolved for his sins, but for the first time in a long time he feels something other than failure.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I expect 1-2 more chapters for this. Thank you for the kind words and the kudos.

_Days since loss: 94_

_Days before extraction: 1_ 01:42

Pidge confronts him again that night. Usually they meet on neutral territory: the lab, the galley, over the chessboard, or on the back of the black lion under alien suns. Tonight is different.

They’re on an endless black plane. In the foreground are the multicolored neon images of their lions and Voltron. It’s not unlike the cave where Lance found the blue lion, but there are no walls or celling to speak of.

Pidge walks towards him, and the sounds of his shoes hitting the empty blackness that comprises the floor is deafening.

“I died you know. I’m not worth risking the team or Voltron for,” he says with the same level of dry wit that he uses to drag Lance over dinner or make comments over Hunk’s shoulder when he finds errors in his code.

“But Haggar did something to you right?” His eyes drift down to Pidge’s chest. The top of the metal panel is visible over the V neck of the druid robes he wears. “You’re still out there. I’m bringing you home.”

“It’s something like living,” Pidge replies. “It’s cold.” He rubs his hands together.

Shiro takes them in his own and covers them. For what good it does. His cybernetic arm isn’t exactly a great conductor of human warmth.

“Just help me Pidge. Help us help you,” He begs.

“Don’t expect things to be the same.”

_Days since loss: 94_

_Days before extraction 1_ 09:15

“Where is it telling you to go?” Keith asks gesturing to his prosthetic. He’s got it pressed against the glass of the observation deck. “Where is he telling you to go?”

This time they have no coordinates. Just a burning in the tips of his hands when he scrolls through Coran’s map of the known universe and fixates on the center. Heuristically, it makes sense. Pidge was valuable, as a paladin, and as a mind whose power was virtually unmatched.

Unlike Allura’s capture, they didn’t want Pidge to be found. This was a plan that hinged on unbridled grief that caused mistrust and anger to grow between them. This was made abundantly clear in the recent Galra attacks on the castle, which sought them out and dogged them until they were left with no options other than to form Voltron.

At the time, they couldn’t and had to rely on a worm hole to escape.

Now they had the firepower, and no wedge driven between them. However…

 “Are you ready for the possibility that you’ll have to confront Haggar again?” Keith asks.

“This isn’t about me or my past,”Shiro decides after a moment of thought. “Recovering Pidge is our only priority.” But Keith makes a valid point. It would be so easy to lose himself and do something unimaginably stupid that could compromise the mission. “I will need you all to keep me on task.”

“Listen guys, I don’t want to sound completely awful here, but what if we’re just going on a wild chase? What if something like last time happens?” Hunk says unable to meet his team’s gaze. His dark cheeks tinge in pink shame.

“How do you catch a Pidgeon?” Lance mumbles under his breath hotly. “We’re like probably literally trying to get the smartest person in the universe, and if he’s out there he’s been pumped up with Galra technology.”

“Hunk and Lance, these are valid concerns. Which is why we need to do it cleanly. We don’t have the best track record when it comes to storming into places with the intent of recovery.” They were still weak, physically with the green lion and Allura’s shaky truce, and emotionally as everyone was still mourning. “We need to have them bring Pidge to us, so to speak.”

“What do you have in mind?” Keith asks.

 “They’re probably not using Pidge for the arenas. He was specifically targeted, and they have to have some intel on our team, how we interact, and what our strengths are.”

“So you think they have him working on some kind of evil Galra nerd stuff?” Lance asks.  

“Yeah. I do,” Shiro replies. “So the question is ,how do you get Pidge to show up somewhere? Even when he’s so absorbed in something he won’t answer his own name or gets lost because he’s coding while walking?”

“Break something important,” Hunk replies.

“Or they break something important,” Allura replies gesturing to Keith and Lance.

Keith scowls and Lance clutches at his heart in response. “Damn Allura, shots fired.”

“Exactly. So we need to find out where the most important components of technological infrastructure are held. Then we’ll bring Pidge to us.”

“I can help with this.” Keith gets up from his perch in the rear of the control room and joins Shiro at the middle of the map. He moves his hands in a wide arc clearing the map of the universe and brings up his own files.

“Ninety three days ago I began compiling a list of possible Galra tech hubs. My assumptions are based on the following criteria: geographic location, known heat signatures from the area, as well as the technological capabilities of each planet…Hunk could you use math or something to narrow down these locations?”

The group stares at a newly rendered map of the universe with Keith’s possible locations. There have to be hundreds of illuminated planets highlighted in the sector that Shiro identified.

Hunk shakes his head a few times as if waking himself from a nap. “Yeah, sure I could totally do some statistical analysis on this. Maybe we could scan for technologies similar to Shiro’s arm too? If you think that’s what’s happened.”

“Please do, Hunk.”

_Days since loss: 95_

_Day of extraction 06:23_

Shiro didn’t dream that night. Although he still only got a few scant hours of sleep, these were actually peaceful. He it didn’t sit well with him. Before the mission began and after he got dressed he made his way down to the lab.

He looked under the computer console, in between the couch cushions, and shook out all of the blankets and pillows in Pidge’s nest.  He knew Pidge kept a spare pair of glasses somewhere. He’d gotten them during their travels because he knew that it would only be a matter of time before the ones he left home with were scratched, or sat on, or lost in zero gravity. Surprisingly, the need for optical aids were relatively common even in the far reaches in the universe.

He checked the junk drawer in the kitchen, but there was nothing but coupons 10,000 years past their expiration date. He checked behind their stash of tea knowing that sometimes Pidge hid money or his diary back there, away from Lance and Hunk’s prying gaze. _Nothing._

He was about to check Pidge’s room before he remembered two distinct things. The first, was that Pidge never spent much time in his own room. The second, was much more helpful. The glasses were in his own room, stashed in the bottom drawer of his nightstand. Pidge had insisted that he was the only one responsible enough to make sure the glasses stayed unbroken and ready for him when needed.

With great care he carefully wipes the lenses with a handkerchief with a checked pattern. Another one of the handful of Pidge’s things strewn about his room so effortlessly that they blend in with his own. After making sure that the lenses are spotless, he wraps the lenses in the cloth.

_Day of rescue_ 09:01

They’ve locked into a target. It’s a planet within the suspected area that has been drained of its quintessence several days prior. Although the Galra’s new development in quintessence extraction is rapid beyond conceivable thought, it still takes time for the energy to be transported to storage areas. It takes even longer for the energy to be disseminated across the universe.

None of them have any idea how the quintessence supply chain works, but this seems to be the best point of sabotage for their mission. Success here would not only mean reuniting the team, but also gathering lots of great intel.

The plan is not as simple as he’d hoped, but it minimized the risk of all lions being captured at once. First, Keith and Lance would bombard a nearby Galra stronghold. This would serve as a diversion and call  all attention to the affected planet. Then, they would immediately run into the Xalox asteroid belt to lose the larger battle ships. Smaller pods could be handled individually.

Next, the green lion would deliver Allura, himself, and Hunk to the quintessence stores. He and Allura would minimize the guards in the area while Hunk installs a code that is designed to allow millions of units of quintessence to spill out and seep back into the ground and atmosphere. This would be a timed release, something that looked like it could be fixed.

In theory it could be fixed, but only by Pidge.

Literally. Hunk had finished this project, but it was something that he and Pidge had been working on together.

It all goes so smoothly. Something about it stinks. Makes his skin itch and his conscious crawl to all the unknown variables within the mission.

When Lance and Keith come across the channel and report, “We’re in deep Shiro, just as planned.”

And Lance adds “We had tons of pods after us, but we cleaned em’ up easy.”

He feels even more suspicious.

When he and Allura easily neutralize the guards at the processing facility, and he can see the vermillion quintessence leak out from the storage units easily, he has to stop for a moment and make sure that this isn’t just another very elaborate nightmare.

But when a ricochet blaster stream grazes the left side of his rib cage, he is assured that this is painfully real.

Galra backup is here and with a vengeance. Quintessence is far more valuable than troop and supply barracks. It doesn’t take long for him to see the dark colored druid robes.

He’s forever grateful that before raw emotion takes over and he charges in he barks over the comm for Allura and Hunk to cover him. With razor sharp focus he illuminates his arm, and eviscerates as many druids as possible desperately trying to make it to the center.

There’s no mistaking it. It’s him. There’s no mistaking it. The height, the big brown eyes, the slight curve of the hip and the slouch of the spine. It makes the blood drain from his face.

Pidge has always been an agile burst of green lightening across the matte gray backdrop of Galra ships.

Now is no exception. Pidge’s eyes snap to life and focus in on him, sharp and uncaring.

Pidge is fast. The difference now is that Pidge hasn’t always been this strong. He recognizes the change instantly. He can feel more muscle beneath Pidge’s taut skin. He can feel something there panicked and animalistic. The same kind of things that race beneath his own surface.

Pidge bears down on him and he can taste the metallic tang of blood in his mouth. He can feel an unbridled physical strength that was so painfully absent from Pidge’s hand to hand contact before.

Shiro goes in at Pidge’s middle for a neutralizing move, but Pidge manages to tackle him to the floor instead. “Pidge,” he growls into his ear.

“Pidge,” he breathes again raggedly. He can feel his control slip as Pidge waives between enemy and friend who needs rescue. He can feel the metallic heat of his arm shooting up from his fingertips to his elbow, and he’s not sure how much longer he can hold out.

In the background he’s vaguely aware of Allura and Hunk trying to keep the guards at bay.

“Stop calling me that,” Pidge growls between gritted teeth.

“It’s who you are Pidge.” He wrestled out of Pidge’s grasp and turns them over. Without thinking about _why_ he presses his illuminated hand into the metal plate that is covered by Pidge’s armor. He doesn’t have to see it to know it’s there. It’s been revealed to him so many times through countless nightmares. He swears that he can feel Haggar’s spells engraved there.

He burns through the armor and the scent of acrid burning clothes as it mingles with the electric scent of blaster fire. He can taste the acridness that goes along with it.

At the contact, Pidge’s eyes go wide and his body goes limp.

The only thought he can hold in his panicked and cluttered mind is _Pidge please come home with me._

Shiro catches him as he slumps forward all the strength, Galra or otherwise sucked out of him. “Shiro,” he murmurs into the larger man’s arm. His eyes roll into the back of his head and he loses consciousness.

_Day of extraction: 11:59_

He’s reluctant to let go of Pidge’s unconscious form. As he places him in the pod his fingers linger on the joints of his knees, his hips, and his back. He’s been gone for so long he just wants to hold on and make sure that he’s real. When he finally does place Pidge in the pod his arms feel disturbingly empty at the loss of contact.  

He can feel a large purple black bruise developing on his ribcage. There’s also the wet smack of a bruise on the inside of his mouth where Pidgee decked him. But there’s no way he’s leaving Pidge even if its for a moment to get into his own pod.

Pidge is thinner now, if that’s somehow possible. His collar bones jut out sharply from the underneath the loose fitting white cryopod garment. His breasts are smaller now so that it looks like he’s wearing the binder even though he’s clearly not. His arms and legs are not as Shiro remembers them. Once velvety soft, they’re now laden with sinewy muscle. The shirt is so loose he can fully see the metal panel on his chest. It’s a brilliant platinum color with intricate foreign carvings. There is ugly white scar tissue surrounding it’s edges.

The sound of the pod’s diagnostic scan was the only thing that punctuated the eerie silence of the infirmary. It smelled of antiseptic and the temperature always ran a bit too cold. Under normal circumstances, he would find it unnerving. Now it blends in with the frantic static in his mind.

The panel doesn’t differ at all from the vision he’s seen countless times in his dreams, and yet the sight of it still frightens him. Stomps him right in the gut and takes his breath away. It makes him think of the day he’d lost Pidge. In an instant he can see the hole in his chest; large gaping and spilling blood everywhere.

He’s seen the other paladins in the pods, usually their expressions peaceful. Tonight Pidge’s face twists and contorts going through a brutal affective pattern of fear and pain over and over and over again. His eyebrows draw together and relax in an endless pattern. His mouth is pulled into a tightly sewn grimace.

 He so desperately wanted to believe that the fact that Pidge was here and was alive was a very good thing. Simultaneously, he’s tugged back to his dream, Pidge begging him not to come looking. Was he selfish for thinking so?

What had they done to his mind? Would he experience memory loss too? And if so, how? Would the pod help with night terrors and flashbacks? How much had they tampered with his mind? Shiro would never forgive himself if something happened to Pidge’s cognitive abilities. He couldn’t reduce Pidge to a single characteristic like that. It’d be a crime to do so. But, being smart made Pidge made him the sun and the moon to Shiro. He was certain that the feeling was the same for so many people across the universe.

He stoops slightly at the knee and presses his head against the glass so that his face is parallel to Pidge’s. In a soft whisper, he finally speaks. “I’m so glad to have you back Pidge.” The thrashing has caused Pidge’s hair to fall into his face, and Shiro desperately wants to push it away. After a moment he rights himself, but remains pressed against the tank.

A tap at his shoulder brings him back to the present. Lance is there with a pillow and sleeping bag in tow. Behind him, are the other castle inhabitants. “You’re not the only one that thinks Pidgeon shouldn’t be alone tonight. C’mon we’re making a nest.”

_Three days after extraction: 15:22_

“I’m afraid that we have to consider that he may be combative again upon waking.” Allura warns softly. Her hand squeezes his shoulder.

“Of course,” Shiro replies as if he’s trying to convince himself. A combative Pidge is a problem. A combative Pidge that doesn’t know who they are…who he is…

Carefully Coran presses on the buttons at the side of Pidge’s pod which engages the awakening sequence. The glass shield lifts up gradually, and before Pidge even has the chance to feel a tinge of pod legs Shiro is at his side. He has one arm around Pidge’s impossibly small waist and the other at his shoulder.

He takes it as a good sign that Pidge isn’t coming at him with those impossible lightening fast reflexes he’d seen in the quintessence storage area. “Welcome home Pidge,” he says finally. In doing so he breaks the tense silence that enveloped the infirmary.

Large honey brown eyes look up at him intently as he tries to focus his eyes. “Oh,” He removes his hand from Pidge’s shoulder but still holds him steady. His hand disappears briefly into his pocket and he fishes out the checked handkerchief. “We have a spare pair of glasses for you.”

Hunk moves to help him. His hands are quite full. Before Hunk can help him, he opens the ear pieces sloppily with one hand and sets them on the bridge of Pidge’s crooked nose as he’s done a thousand times before.

Pidge shifts in his grip taking the brunt of his weight on his heels and then takes a half step back from Shiro. “Why do you have these?”

In that moment, the microscopic hope that was growing in his chest is crushed. It was stupid to think that he’d be able to remember everything perfectly from before. Just because his own memory was damaged only from the time of his capture to the time of his rescue, didn’t mean it was going to be the same for Pidge. What should he say, the truth? “You left them in my room so I’d have them when you needed them?” Or should he say something less specific and let his memory come back gradually on his own.

“We knew you’d need them,” Keith offers from over his shoulder.

“Yes,” Pidge furrows his brow and takes another step backwards. Shiro recognizes the wide blown feral look in his eyes and it makes his heart race with guilt laced anxiety. He feels the static of conflict build between them. “But _why_. How do I know any of you?” He ducks back behind Shiro and let’s the larger man’s body shield him as he gestures to the three other paladins, Allura, and Coran.

“Pidge,” Allura speaks calmly. “These three and Shiro are your teammates. I am Allura and this is Coran. We make sure the lions and the castle are in working order. Do you mind telling us how…” She pauses in order to gather her thoughts. Shiro can tell from the way her face pulls at her blue facial lines that even in her deep diplomatic wisdom she’s being tested right now. “How do you and Shiro know each other?”

“We don’t…I don’t know why, but his hand speaks to my heart.” He continues to inspect each person from behind Shiro’s towering stance. As his eyes dart from one paladin to the other, his fingers clench and unclench. He’s ready to strike at a moment’s notice. “I don’t like it. I want to know why he’s doing it,” Pidge says with bitterness in his voice.

Shiro needs to diffuse the situation and diffuse it now. Something tells him that every moment that Pidge is in his new augmented body a war rages within. He cannot allow anything to disrupt the balance of the Pidge they know that still remains, and the weapon that stands before them.

“Pidge.” He pauses for a moment.

“Don’t call me that,” Pidge had warned during the extraction.

“May I call you that?” He asks over his shoulder.

“That’s fine,” he whispers softly refusing to make eye contact.

“Let’s talk about this for a moment. I don’t know why my arm reaches out to you either.” He worries his lip slightly between his teeth. It’s a bad habit that he’s mostly kicked right before he went to flight school. Nervous tics have no place in the Garrison and they certainly have no place in Major Shirogane’s son. But this situation makes his heart pound so hard he can feel it in is ears. It’s not exactly a lie. He can’t even begin to explain the connection between their technologies. It sets him on edge worse than thinking of the arena or confronting Haggar. “Come with me. Please.”

_Days after extraction: three_ 17:00

“This is kind of good right? I mean one Pidge isn’t dead.” The knickknacks in the common room rattle on their shelves as Hunk paces back and forth from the threshold to the large case of Altean cannons of various mixed media, digital scroll, parchment, and animal hide. “Two, he’s not trying to kill us anymore. Three, he’s kind of responding to his name.”

“Shiro’s condition has improved over time.” Keith offers. “Why would we think that Pidge is any different?”

“Um, because” Lance interrupts. “Shiro knew who he was and what happened before that space witch got in there and messed with him. Shiro didn’t die. Pidge doesn’t even know who we are.”

“We have to trust Shiro on this,” Keith decides. “He’s the only one that has any direct experience with this kind of thing.”

“Yeah,” Hunk agrees flatly.

“Hey,” Lance swings his feet off the edge of an oversized chair designed for the largest of humanoids. “Hunk, you’d better go dig Pidge’s diary out of wherever you’ve got it hidden.”

_Days after extraction: three_ 17:09

Shiro sits on the tattered old couch in Pidge’s lab. Everything has been largely untouched since his disappearance, but at least the maintenance drones have continued to perform basic tasks in the space. There’s little dust to speak of.

On the surface it seems as if could be back to business as usual. Pidge might be shooting him the occasional longing glance over the rims of his glasses, over the top of his monitors and across the room where he’d sit. Or, he’d burning off nervous energy by doing push ups, or sit ups or stretches in order to keep himself from just saying to hell with it and giving Pidge exactly what they both wanted.

 Where does he even begin?

Pidge stands at a distance keeping nearer to the starboard exit. The pained look of fear hasn’t left his face since he’d regained consciousness.

“You’re like me.” Pidge says slicing into the dense silence.

“Yes, you know about my arm,” he holds up his arm and clenches and unclenches his fist. “I was Zarkon’s prisoner,” he thinks of relaying the rest of the information but it’s too much too soon. Start slow, let things come back slowly. He will never forget the feeling of being bombarded with information, overloaded with questions, and feeling worse than before. “Haggar made me what I am, although I’m not sure how.”

“We know each other?” He picks nervously at the loose threads of the pod gown. Then he looks nervously at his cuticles. It’s the first Pidge like thing he’s seen since the rescue.

He also rubs his arms from elbow to wrist as if he’s trying to rub away the cold.

“We know each other?”

“Yes, you’ve lived with us for over a year.”

Pidge looks away and nods his head slowly.  His hands have drifted down to his sides and he rubs there too.

“Are you cold?”

No response.

“You can use one of these blankets.” He gets up slowly and pulls one from the top of the pile. It’s made of deep purple yarn, and if the uneven edges are any indicator, its one that Lance has knitted in a fit of homesickness. Wordlessly he offers it to Pidge.

“How did you manage without your glasses?” He’s seen Pidge knock over glasses of water and mugs of tea that were right in front of him when his glasses were displaced.

Pidge looks him up and down in suspicion. He grasps for the blanket in a quick darting motion and then wraps it around his shoulders.

“The Druid witch Haggar decided when I could and cold not see. She said that I would be next to useless in the arena in comparison to my cognitive ability. A functioning body was seen as a privilege.”

Shiro sits down again. Then, he kicks out the armchair that’s butted up too close to the edge of the couch. He gestures for Pidge to sit down too.

“What do you know?” Pidge sits, still wrapped in the purple blanket. “About being Zarkon’s prisoner?” He worries at his sleeves underneath the blanket. “I don’t know if I can trust you, but I need to know. I need to know who I was before all of this and why I dream about you all the time.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags added. Thanks for the kudos and comments. Drop me a line @onepunchprompts on tumblr if you want.

_Days after extraction: three_ 17:18

“What do you know?” Pidge sits, still wrapped in the purple blanket. “About being Zarkon’s prisoner?” He worries at his sleeves underneath the blanket. “I don’t know if I can trust you, but I need to know. I need to know who I was before all of this and why I dream about you all the time.”

There’s another tug at Shiro’s soul. Where to begin? Talking about Kerberos meant talking about Matt and Dr. Holt, which meant talking about how Pidge had gotten into the Garrison, which inevitably led to talk of Pidge as a paladin and Pidge as a man…Not to mention the thousand other complex and delicately wound factors in between.

“I was Zarkon’s prisoner for over a year. I was taken to the gladiator arenas to fight. I did so not of my own volition, but only to survive…and protect others when I could.” He runs a hand through his bangs and breathes in deeply.

Pidge only looks like he’s half paying attention, which means he’s already taken in the information and has a thousand counterpoints to make in response. He takes a few steps forward and runs his hands across the expansive touchpad that runs parallel to the collection of monitors on the console. His touch activates it and hundreds of blue green keys are illuminated. These things are yours?

“No,” Shiro admits with a half-smile. “They’re yours.”

“Figures,” he sits down at one of the screens and rests his hands gently against the keyboard. “You’re too buff to need all this anyway.” He takes a few experimental taps at the keys. The blanket falls down around his hips in the process.

Shiro on the other hand swears he can feel his jaw brush the gray green floor tiles of the lab. It’s the slight, subtle brains before beauty kind of jab that Pidge lives for. It’s the first thing Pidge like he’s heard in a long, long time.

“Why did you stop fighting us?”

“You touched my panel right?”

Shiro nods but it goes unnoticed as Pidge pours through the files on his computers. “Yes. What happened to you when I touched it?”

“Do you have anything to drink around here? Something hot?” He pushes his glasses up his nose with his index finger.

_Days since extraction_ _three_ 17:26

Shiro has to take a moment to collect himself in the galley. It’s psychological whiplash seeing Pidge weave in and out of the person he was before and the strange blank slate that he is now. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but being teased and getting bossed around within an hour of leaving the pod...He knows from his own experiences that it will never be the same. He’s marked with something that has changed him forever, but he feels so much better now after over a year of having progress ripped from him while under duress and surrounded by love. He can only hope the same of Pidge.

“How’s it going?” Hunk walks in with an empty bowl and moves towards the green dispenser.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” He replies. “I’m getting ordered to make tea.”

_Days after extraction: three_ 17:41

“Am I your commanding officer or something? Pidge asks when he places his mug in front of him. The action is enough to tear him away from the files and give Shiro his full attention.

Pidge’s mug is made of an ancient yellow orange terracotta and glazed with rare metals so that a cracked pattern has appeared along the surface in a deep copper color. It’s bold to the point of being gaudy. He feels nervous in presenting it to Pidge, like needs to explain why he has it. Lance got it for him for his birthday. He also wants to explain that Pidge has really quite grown to like it….But that’s probably the least of what Pidge would like to know.

 “No.” Shiro laughs.

“Then why did you actually listen to me?”

“I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“So we’re friends.” Pidge takes the mug in between his hands and holds it up to his face so that the steam wafts over his glasses and leaves them fogged. “That’s why it’s my stuff but you seem so comfortable here.”

“Exactly.”

Pidge nods a few times. “I guess it explains why I dream about you.” He takes a small sip before continuing. “When you touched the panel, it’s like I got pulled out from under water. I could breathe again. I could see things I hadn’t seen before. “Pidge takes another sip. “And I guess I became really conscious of what I was doing. That draining all that quintessence was wrong somehow… It made sense to trust you, but it all happened so fast.”

“I’m glad you did,” Shiro continues.  “What do you remember from before? That can help us…help me help you fill in some of the gaps.” He worries his lip a bit for the second time in not long enough. “But sometimes my memories don’t come back until I’m in a certain situation and see certain things that trigger a memory.”

“I’m sitting at the kitchen table. My brother is really upset. Like upset to the point he’s red in the face. I’ve solved all of the math problems my dad gave us to work on while we wait for dinner to be ready and he’s got like…two done…So I got to go play. I think that was a while ago. I looked younger than I am now…And then I’m here.” He pauses for a moment and looks over all of the monitors in front of him.

Shiro swallows the lump that has formed in his throat while Pidge talks. There’s so much that’s happened between then and now.

“I can tell you’re holding a lot back. You seem to know everything and I can’t remember anything. It’s selfish you know.”

He inhales sharply and starts at Kerberos. He starts at Kerberos in a roundabout way. His own days in the Garriosn. Being at the top of his class, being promoted, graduating and being given a high profile mission almost immediately. He talks about the day his father actually told him he’d made him proud. It just so happened to be the same day he met Dr. Holt and Matt. He holds out as long as he can, until he can see the impatience and frustration grow in Pidge’s expression.

“Pidge, I know this is hard for you…waiting for me to reveal all the information, so can we try something?”

“I guess so.”

“Can I touch your panel again?”

Pidge squints his eyes in hesitation, but wordlessly complies. He pulls down the pod gown that he’s still wearing ever so slightly revealing the top third of the plate. “You want to show me?”

“I want to try,” he says as he activates his hand.

He rests it there, just as before, and thinks about how the Kerberos mission fails so awfully, about the handful of memories he has of being with the Galra including the last time he saw Matt and his time in the arena. He works through every gritty detail of his rescue up through Keith’s cabin until Pidge pulls away sharply.

He’s breathing fast and flushes white like his gown, like he’s just completed several rounds of hand to hand training.

He’s had similar reactions when catching glimpses of his cloudy past. He can’t imagine being given that much info at once.

Pidge stands up abruptly and the blanket falls to the floor forgotten. He’s broken out into a cold sweat and he clenches and unclenches his fingers over and over again.

“Pidge I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says back, but his voice betrays him and he’s much to loud and far too curt. “It makes so much sense now…I’m sorry. I have to get out of here.” He darts from the lab without further warning.

_Days since extraction: seven_  15:05

 After that night in the lab, Pidge spends a lot of time in the hangar near the green lion. He’ll rest on his paw, or take the freight elevator up to the top and lay on her back or head. The lion never does much of anything, but the soft purr of the auxiliary fans are soothing to Pidge.

He avoids the lab like the plague. Although he’s had the memory of the Green lion thrust upon him far more abruptly than the lab, it’s far more complex to figure out. Very little of his code contains comments, and most of it _looks_ like garbage now that he’s been so far removed from it. It stings because he knows that in another life it was easier than talking.

It’s here in the hangar that he reads his old diary, hastily pulled from Hunk’s bookshelf the morning after he’d left Shiro in the lab. Here there are memories of Mom and Dad and Matt, things that he can still recall freely, untainted, and as they were. They also contain notes from his days in the Garrison. These are fuzzier, but they can be extracted from time to time.

Absolutely none of it is soothing.

There are still really big chunks of the story missing, and Pidge absolutely cannot stand to be looked at by _everyone_ in pity. They’re supposed to be part of a team, but he really just feels like a liability.

But he can hardly bear the thought of going back to Shiro and seeing more.

When he goes perfectly still like this, lets the diary slip from his grasp, and Matt and Dad give him some peace, his mind slips to the dull ache between his legs.  He certainly didn’t seem to have a problem going through the motions for the first fifteen years of his life.

Then again he didn’t have a problem with most things. He didn’t have a problem with covering for Matt when he was about to get busted for hacking. He didn’t have a problem with lying to his mother so he could get out of the house to watch shuttle launches. He didn’t have a problem with waking up in a stranger’s arms from a dream and just assuming that everything he said about his previous life was true.

In the memories Shiro shared, it didn’t seem like he had a problem with confessing, “I’m a girl.”

He didn’t have a problem with _that_.

He had bigger problems. Like what Shiro had shown him, and what it had meant.

He faithfully divides his time between laying on the green lion’s warm panels, or at night he retreats to his room and burrows under piles of blankets but absolutely cannot sleep. He can’t sleep when he’s freezing.

Five days after the first incident, Shiro sends him a message over the comm “Whenever you’re ready. No pressure.” He deletes in spite, because even if they were close before he doesn’t feel that way now.

Another way to fill the void is to step into the shower with the heat on full blast and simply stand there until his skin turns red. He’ll use soap occasionally, but at this rate he’s up to two or three showers per day. They almost make his skin feel warm.

It’s not enjoyable. It never is. He feels so numb all the time, and the walls of the shower make him feel trapped. It doesn’t help that he’s left alone with his thoughts and forced to look at his body. Forced to deal with a problem that really should NOT be a problem at all.

It was so messed up. The scars didn’t bother him. The metal plate doesn’t bother him much either. Sure, it was a daily reminder of his own mortality and the fact that even that too, in this strange strange world he inhabited, was permeable too, but at least he knew where it came from.

What bothers him is what’s on either side of the chest plate. Did they bother him this much before? They’re small enough he can hide them by wearing the clothes in his closet. The clothes they say that are his. The clothes that kind of fit, but not really because they’re too big all over. There’s also the issue of what’s between his legs. It designates him as female, but he finds it deeply disturbing to look at. Like he’s looking at some other girl’s body.

It doesn’t help that they seem to be dancing around it, always calling him by his name Pidge, never her or him or she or he or Katie so that has to mean something.

He catches reflection of himself in the stall of the shower door and punches it with tightly closed fist. His knuckles sting against the durable translucent material, but he likes it. It’s the first thing other than cold he feels in along time. So he does it again and again and again and again and doesn’t stop til the door is cracked and his knuckles are raw.

Then he goes to find Shiro.

It takes longer than he should because he doesn’t know where anything is on this enormous castle, and actively wants to avoid anyone that isn’t Shiro. He finds him in the starboard library. He doesn’t think he’s been in here before. Well, hasn’t been in here since he’s been out of the tank. It’s smaller than the other library and contains mostly fiction.  He’s sitting on the floor with a book nested between his feet.  

“Shiro.”

The man on the floor jumps slightly and the book flips closed between his feet.

“I’m ready for more.” He stomps over and sits down in front of him urgently. He rips the robe he rest of the way open, demanding that Shiro do something.

Shiro takes stock of the scene before him. Pidge’s hands are raw to the point of bleeding on a few knuckles. His skin is so pale it looks like drops of blood against linen. His robe is barely pulled closed. Against his better judgement he opts to give Pidge the memories first, and tend to the wounds later.

Focusing his mind seemed to work last time, and clearly Pidge was ready to rediscover something specific. “What do you need?”

“To know why I hate my body so much.”

_“I need to move past this because I have more important things to think about.”_  He growls over the connection as soon as Shiro touches his electric tipped fingers to his chest.

_Days since extraction: eight_  20:34

This time, through the connection between them he feels so much of Pidge’s raw and unguarded emotion. It scares him. Pidge rarely shared this much even when they were closest. Now he’s feeling a blue throbbing vein of self-hatred. It pumps toxic venom deep within Pidge’s core and threatens to taint the rest of Pidge’s lifeblood within.

 Shiro doesn’t even try to hold back this time and gives him everything.

When the truth is revealed to him, the self-hatred shifts into something like relief. Pidge’s body relaxes and he flops back onto the thick shag carpet of the library, his robe still open. Eventually, he pulls the robe messily back over his exposed form. “I can do that? I can just say I’m a man?”

“It’s a big universe out there Pidge. So big that male and female and x and y chromosomes seem so small and unimportant. I think you can be whatever you want.”

“What else do you want to know?” Shiro scoots closer so he can inspect Pidge’s knuckles. He’s trying to decide if they’re worth a trip to the pod or if some salve and bandages will suffice.

“Everything,” Pidge decides. “Later. I just want to hold this one good thing for awhile. Do you understand?”

Shiro gives him a curt nod. “Absolutely.”

Pidge remains glued to the floor for a long while, and it’s enough to make Shiro move to the ambiance panel and crank up the heat. It didn’t take much effort to realize that Pidge was always cold. He also scares up a first aid kit and leaves some bandages nearby.

After nearly an hour of laying on the floor and staring at the celling Pidge finally speaks.

It shatters the peaceful silence between them and makes Shiro jump slightly for the second time that afternoon.

“There’s a reason I’ve been avoiding more memories.”

“It’s okay to be afraid. I’m terrified of what I’ll remember every single time we’re confronted by Galra.”

“It’s different for me. I remember a lot about what happened to me. I’m afraid of what else the past will put into context for me.” Pidge sits up and locks eyes with Shiro. His intense yellow brown eyes feel uncomfortable on his skin and threaten to set him ablaze in guilt and shame. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m pretty sure I saw my brother?”  

Shiro’s eyes go wide with disbelief.

“I didn’t get to leave the druids much, but I did get touted around to a few Galra think tanks. Fresh eyes on stale projects…He was at one of them. I don’t know where or what the project even was.” Pidge’s head hangs slightly. “I didn’t even know who he was at the time.” His breath hitches and his voice cracks “I didn’t even get to enjoy the fact that for a moment I knew he was still alive, and with me.” He breaks down again for the second time that day. The soft and low sobs are a sharp contract to harsh yelling earlier.

“That’s all I remember.” He says between sobs. “I don’t know how long we were together, or where they took him next, or even where they took me next, but I’m certain I didn’t know who he was because he kept calling me Katie and I kept finding it irritating.”

Shiro knows that someday there will be a problem that is to great, too complex, too devastating to be solved by taking Pidge into his arms and holding him close. Pidge was rubbed raw, like a new recruit’s feet during hell week. He could only hope that this time, he’d be able to soothe.

The sobs give way to pathetic hiccupping sounds.

Shiro rubs in slow circles, across the shoulders and down the spine. He pays extra attention to Pidge’s neck knowing that this is where his body carries the brunt of his tightly wound anxiety driven tension.

“I didn’t want to come back to you because I wanted something for myself no matter how painful.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You have everything here.” He nods towards Shiro’s arm. Everyone else remembers so much too. But this was something that was about my life that was mine.”

“Thank you so much for trusting me Pidge. I know that these aren’t your memories. They’re my memories about you. They’re biased by my own perceptions….but it doesn’t make your experiences any less real.”

Pidge makes a sound that’s something between a sob and a huff.

“He won’t hold it against you. Matt loves you.” He repeats it over and over again until Pidge falls asleep in his arms.

_Days since extraction: fourteen_ 11:24

Pidge has had a million pieces to put back together over the past few weeks. He accepts almost everything put before him. His diary fills in certain gaps such as his journey through the Garrison and his monitoring of Galra forces looking for the blue lion. Most of all, it helps him understand his relationship with Hunk and Lance. There’s playful doodles in the margins and notes that say, “I caught Hunk reading this again. XOXO Lance.”

There are coffee stains on some pages. Ever since that first night back when Shiro brought him tea he’s rarely been without something hot. He decides these stains were caused by him.

On other pages there are other spatters and crumbs which vary in consistency and shape. He decides these are from Hunk pilfering through the book’s contents.

There’s also a running tally of times he’d apparently covered Lance’s night watch shift in exchange for extra desert…And a runny tally of times Lance has “saved your sorry ass from the sarge” written in scrawl that’s decidedly different from his own in exchange for help with drafting homework.

There are also very detailed instructions on how to use the dorm microwave and washing machine. Very detailed, in terse technical language. There are precise diagrams drawn to scale. He’s decided that these are copied down verbatim after what must’ve been a very taxing conversation with Hunk.

It’s through these fragments of past experiences he’s able to have handful of good days mixed in with so many bad. Occasionally, the memories come out naturally, albeit slowly. They’re never useful or important, almost to the point of being asinine.

Over breakfast one morning he locks eyes with Lance and refuses to stop staring.

“Problem Pidgeon?’

If Pidge was blunt before the accident, he’s completely round now.

“You have a birthmark on your right ass cheek don’t you?” he asks because sometimes false memories are planted there. Hurtful lies about the team that are designed to continue to breed mistrust and agony. Although why Haggar would implant that as a false memory remains a mystery.

“Left.” Keith responds without missing a beat.

Lance has green stuff spout out his nose and get sucked down his windpipe so that Hunk has to pat him rigorously on the back. “Keith what is WRONG with you? Pidge doesn’t need to know that.”

“Yes he does. Every memory is important.”

“Why do you even remember that?” He asks incredulously.

“I think…..”Pidge says around his spoon and then removes it from his mouth. “I ended up seeing it a lot in the Garrison.”

“Accurate.” Hunk chimes in.  

“Oh, Hunk,” Pidge covers his mouth in order to cover a toothy smile. “You can make weird farting noises with your armpit?”

“YES I CAN!” Hunk booms and shoves his hands under his pits immediately. That morning he smiles so wide his face hurts. He’s remembered something, all on his own.

Keith is still a bit of a mystery. There are lots and lots of training module files on his computers in various states of design. Each file bears the name “ _For_Keith_Ver1.1, 1.2,”_ and so on and so forth until the numbers climb well into the sixties. He suspects that they may get along better now than they did before the accident. Lance will make some reference, or some kind of comment and look at him like he _should_ know…In the end he and Keith end up shooting each other very confused looks.

“Aw Pidge, come on this is something that _needs_ to come back.  I can’t have both of you giving me the stink eye over the _same_ things.”

Allura is different. So different. She’s a feminine force that makes him so happy that he ripped his robe open in front of Shiro and demanded answers. He watches her take off in the green lion on missions. Her movements are elegant and seamless. Everything he’s not, and pretty sure he never was. It makes it hard to believe that he was ever at the helm of such a lovely creature.

Coran feeds him. Coran tells him where all the libraries are. Coran leaves him to himself. Therefore Coran makes him feel the least uneasy.

And Shiro….Despite spending more time with him than anyone else on the ship he is the one that makes him the most uneasy. He’s not sure if it’s the dependence upon him for the bulk of his memory restoration or not. On one hand, he doesn’t seem to be the kind of person with anything to hide. On the other, he’s completely at Shiro’s mercy for memory transmission. There are so many empty holes in the story. It would be easy to avoid things for any reason.

It’s painfully obvious that Shiro suffers a great deal of pain of what happened to him, and dad, and Matt. It only helps add to the little nagging voice in his mind that there is something being withheld.

There’s also the tactile relationship between the two. Contact between them is required for memory transference, but there always seems to be more. Shiro grabbing him as soon as he was released from the pod, his arms bulky and warm. Shiro holding him close as he sobbed. Shiro making sure that he had a blanket firmly wrapped around him before running his hands up and down his arms before a memory transfer session.

It’s obvious that they were close. Close in a way that was different from the closeness he felt towards anyone else on the ship. It’s apparent in the way Shiro brings him drinks or blankets. It’s apparent in the way his chess log in the lab is filled with tangible proof of hours and hours and hours of company. It’s painfully apparent during memory transfers. Him and Shiro finding the green lion together. Him and Shiro invading an abandoned Galra ship. Him waving Shiro’s hand around like grabbing him is the most natural thing ever.

It doesn’t help that he does absolutely nothing but question his own memory. Constantly.

Shiro was right, there are things that come back naturally. Any time it’s not something stupid or mundane he’s afraid it’s not real.

So when he shakes images of himself kissing Shiro in a bar out of his clouded mind, it takes every ounce of whatever control he’s reestablished in the last few weeks to dismiss them as false. Even images of them sharing a bed, something that is chaste yet immensely intimate gets buried somewhere deep down beneath his chest plate.

He has other things to worry about. Like if he’s ever going to feel whole again, or if he’s ever going to see Matt again and be able to remember it. More urgently, and possibly easier to accomplish, is figuring out what kind of damage he’s done in the three month period he was gone.

He’s relearned most of his coding styles and found more stuff that actually has comments. Hunk does his best to try to stifle a grin when Pidge complains of going through uncommented syntax. He claims that a know-it-all at the Garrison always told him to scratch out a few comments before he snuck off for a snack.

In the end he makes up for the stifled grin by helping Pidge debug.

Burying it deep works for awhile. One night it backfires horribly. He falls asleep in the lab and wakes up with a situation.

_Days since extraction: twenty-eight_ 06:11

The dream is simple to the point of being cliché. They’re like something out of one of Lance’s romance comics, the ones he claims aren’t shoved under his mattress but totally are...He’s got a list of access codes to every room on the ship stored on a spare hard drive and goes snooping around wherever he can.  

He’s being pushed back on a pair of impossibly soft sheets on an enormous bed. They’re crisp like a linen shirt fresh from being ironed and they feel so great against his skin.

There’s a crystal therapy light which casts a sienna orange glow against the wall.

The climate control must be set too low because the room is too cold and it clashes beautifully with Shiro’s hands raking down his chest. It’s as if every nerve in his body is stimulated at once.

 Pidge leans slightly switching their positions. Then, he scratches lightly against the scars on Shiro’s hips and kisses gently across the ones on his bare chest.

“Shiro.” The name flows freely off his tongue. “Shiro.” Pidge leaves his torso and Shiro seals his mouth with his own and kisses him with a fire and desperation that feels so real. “I love you.” Pidge admits when they part. Despite the discomfort and the shyness he feels welling up in his chest he holds Shiro’s gaze firm.

Desperate hands pull at his compression shorts. “Do you love me, or do you just want me?”  He shoots Pidge a cocky grin that’s guaranteed to send his confident demeanor into ruins and cause a deep purple red blush to run from his nose to his chest.

“What’s wrong with both?” Pidge asks his hands never leaving the waistband of his shorts.

“Nothing,” Shiro replies and raises his hips allowing Pidge access to exactly what he wants.

When he wakes, a hot blush is plastered to his face. His skin is damp, and he feels like he has no choice other than to remedy it.

_Days since extraction: thirty_ 12:10

Pidge had started off watching him intently. His eyes tracked each movement of his body with an intensity that burned through him and shook him to the core.

Shook him so much he wrecked a gladiator drone.

He was so grateful when Pidge pulled a mini tool set from his pocket and silently began working on the broken drone for awhile. It was an almost refreshing reprieve. Pidge’s demeanor was like hot and cold. In the days following their first memory transfer, Pidge had purposefully avoided him. Now it was like the opposite. . He bumped into him three or four times a day simply by turning around and finding Pidge to be right there joined at his hip. In orbit there were suns and there were moons and there were stars. He was more than honored to be Pidge’s sun…but being his whole universe would make him go blind.

Finally, Pidge puts away the multi-tool and calls him over. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Anything,” Shiro replies simply.

“Will you touch me again?” He’s already moving to sit and unbuttoning the first few buttons on his shirt.

 He tries to swallow the lump in his throat but his mouth is too dry. “Do you want anything specific today?”

“I was hoping we could try something different today. I want to show you a few things, and I want your opinion. Do you think that would be okay?”

“I don’t see why not.” He sits and moves closer to Pidge.  

Pidge scoots closer.  

Shiro gingerly presses his hand against Pidge’s chest. He illuminates his own hand and watches Pidge’s chest plate and his skin be blanketed in the ethereal purple glow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I think this is the last angst heavy chapter. We're moving into "fix it the best we can" territory.

_Days since extraction: Thirty_ 12:11

“I was hoping we could try something different today. I want to show you a few things, and I want your opinion. Do you think that would be okay?”

“I don’t see why not.” He sits and moves closer to Pidge so that their kneecaps knock together.

Shiro gently presses his hand against Pidge’s chest. He illuminates his own hand and watches Pidge’s chest plate become encased in a dark purple. The surrounding skin becomes a soft fuchsia, and all of it bears an ethereal glow.

“I need to know if these are true or not.” He starts out with something simple. Something he knows the details of like the back of his hand                        because he’d written about it in his diary.

_As you know Matt and Dad left two days ago. It takes several months to get to Kerberos, and several more months to come back. I’ll be alone here with mom for nearly a year. That probably means no one to save me when she wants to go shopping….Maybe I’ll make her happy and get a new gown or something. It doesn’t mean I have to wear it._

_Dad snapped a photo of Matt and I on the Garrison campus. I finally went to get it printed today. I should probably get more copies before I wear it out. I sleep with it under my pillow and look at it all the time._

_I miss them._

So Pidge begins the memory transfer. It’s weird having it go the other way, and he has to be meticulous and cautious so as to not ruin the control condition in his experiment.  What is an experiment without a control other than wishful thinking? The mind is such a funny thing, that it can be so strong and survive the utmost horror, but it can be so malleable.

The image starts cloudy and pixilated. It’s never been like that before with Shiro on the other side, but maybe it’s confirming what he already knows to be true. Shiro is being, for the most part, truthful with him. The images clear and he’s back to the afternoon spent on the Garrison campus.

Dad has shown him the lab space he’s been given here as a part of the Outer Solar System grant. Matt’s shown him his room in the graduate barrack. It’s nothing much and mostly lined with old machines he’s illegally pilfered for parts.

Eventually, the day ends and Matt asks a passing cadet officer to take their photo. He introduces him as the pilot of the upcoming mission.

This is where Pidge has a hard part. He’d never met Shiro before he held onto him for dear life on Keith’s bike. He has very little to go by on what he looked like before. He does make sure to get the hair right. Jet black and perfectly coifed. Probably no scar.

They shake hands, exchange pleasantries, and soon dad is taking him back home, reminding him that there’s only one more year of flight school left and then it’s off to the Garrison.

The transfer breaks apart before Pidge can ever finish. The last part is truthful, but the fact that he has been able to successfully conjure and plant his own false memory weighs heavy on whatever is left of his heart.  

“That never happened.” Shiro says in a hushed voice when Pidge leans back and breaks the contact between them.

“Okay,” he replies a bit too coolly. It was exactly what he was expecting Shiro to say. Dad snapped that photo before they left campus. “Let’s try something else that’s been on my mind.”

This is another one that’s easy for him. They’re raiding Sendak’s ship for the red lion. There’s an easily snagged maintenance drone which he repurposes in minutes. He calls it Rover like it’s a pet. It does everything, enters passcodes, identifies trip wires, and catches him when he falls. He gets pulled over a railing and is lost forever as they try to retake the castle.

He’s pretty sure it’s real. There are a few passing mentions of it in his diary, but again why would something like this be falsely planted?

“That happened. Just as you remember,” Shiro replies before the contact is even broken.

“That’s good. I don’t have much on Rover in my diary or even my files. I guess that one just sort of fell back in.” He cocks his head slightly. “What about this one?” This one takes a moment to bring forward. It’s buried deep and wedged somewhere between his leathery scar tissue and his panel.

Everyone’s in the control room. They’re jetting into parts unknown for a hit and run resupply. Their target is the long awaited and highly prized Galra supply route. Shiro is at the center console. Pidge is to his left. Allura is seated on the other side of Shiro, and Hunk sits next to her.

Coran rests at the observation deck just beyond the console. Lance has made a makeshift control seat next to Hunk. There isn’t enough space, and he’s practically seated in the larger man’s lap. Keith skulks in the corner as he often does when a situation is beyond his technical paygrade. “I’m sorry can you just explain it again?” Lance asks for what must be the third time.

“Okay,” Pidge breathes sharply through his nose. He’d hoped the conversation would’ve died out long before now, but Lance wouldn’t let go of why exactly he’d bought quite a bit of men’s underwear on their recent day trip.

“I made a mistake when I told you all I was a girl. I just so happen to be a guy whose equipment is a bit different.”

“Like…” Lance pursed his lips and traced a few patterns on the center console. “I don’t understand”

Pidge pulls back to meet Shiro’s gaze only to find that it is completely absent. “That didn’t happen. Lance seemed…almost relived when you told him.” Pidge swallows a lump in his throat. So, there were false memories implanted there.

It made the next move even riskier. He knew what he felt when he woke up in the morning after dreaming of Shiro all night _seemed_ real despite the fact that he couldn’t find any record of the rust planet in his journal or files. He knew that feeling was transferred into waking hours when Shiro brought him a blanket or upped the thermostat without even asking. He could feel Shiro’s eyes on him when he thought he wouldn’t notice. The gaze left a blazing trail on the back of his body when he was in the hangar with Green, or when he snapped his laptop shut after hours crammed into the corner of the training room and finally gave the gladiator a go.

If it was false it was going to hurt.

And if it was real it was going to end him all over again. What in the universe did he do to have that? More importantly, what did he do to _lose_ that.

“Okay. One more thing.” He responds as he sees Shiro’s fingers start to retreat. Quiznack forgive him, but he has to know.

The connection grows hot between them. So warm he almost wants to back away, and so discomforting that Shiro actually does. Only his fingertips graze the edge of Pidge’s plate. Usually his whole hand dwarfs the symbol laden panel.

He gives Shiro the dream from the previous morning. He supplies every last confusing detail from the crisp of the sheets to the therapy light. He makes sure not to avoid the inebriating feeling of Shiro’s mouth. _There._ Despite the tug of shame from deep within that tells him to do so. The memory ends with them falling asleep with his entire form crushed into Shiro’s welcoming body.

They part, a deep blush splashed across both of their cheeks. He waits for Pidge to button his shirt, and uses the moment to regain some much needed composure. “That happened,” he said in a voice that was almost inaudible. “We were stranded alone on a rust planet for two months. It started out as something not completely sincere, and then it became very sincere.”

Pidge’s eyes fall to the floor. So it was real, and Shiro had no intention of bringing it up otherwise.

“When we were rescued we decided it was best to put things on hold for the sake of the ongoing mission.”

Pidge nods. It’s too calm in comparison to the storm that’s brewing inside. “You didn’t think I may want to know about this?”

His face cycles through several emotions ranging from anger to sadness to disgust. “I wanted to tell you Pidge. I really did.” He pauses again to choose his words carefully, then shakes his head as if he knows he can’t. “I didn’t even know where to begin when we got you back. Honestly it seemed almost unimportant in comparison everything else.”  

Pidge pinches at the corners of his eyes and lets out a long sigh of exhaustion. “Shiro,” He gets up and turns on his heel to leave. He has no reason to remain in the training deck. It smells of sweat and burned drone parts. Shiro has the air conditioner on blast because he’s been at it for some time, and it really just irritates him. “You’ve done so much for me in the past month or so, not even counting what you’ve done for me before. Why?”

Before he leaves he turns over his shoulder and adds, “You’d be almost perfect if you weren’t so needlessly self righteous,”

 _Days since extraction: Thirty_ 12:47

 It was immensely selfish. Shiro wasn’t going to deny that in any way. He’d watched Pidge die in his arms. Carried his body for meters trying to fight off Galra sentries, only to have the last physical shell of Pidge torn away from him.

Every morning he fishes the omamori his mother bought him at the local shrine before he went to flight school out of the storage pouch in his armor and strokes the worn vermillion and gold threads. It’s survived the Garrison, and the Galra, and over a year in space, but he’s only begun this ritual since Pidge has returned. For a moment each morning, he forces himself to remember that he is grateful.

He’s grateful, but it’s easier to keep him at a distance. It’s easy to rattle off a list of hollow reasons why to ease the dissonance. Either of them could die at any moment. He’d compromised the team so much when he was gone due to grief. He needed to focus on each member of his team equally. If he gave Pidge those memories, Pidge might feel that there were expectations.  He was keeping both of them from doing something very stupid.

He could continue the boldfaced lie even further. He could tell himself that being honest wouldn’t have made anything better. Pidge was already dealing with enough, and quite frankly he didn’t want to put more expectations on someone who already had the weight of galaxies upon them.

In the end he knew it was something small and cowardly buried within the courageous front he put on. It was afraid of losing Pidge again. It’s not easy to push back those emotions. No one ever told him that letting someone in like that could ignite such a white hot whirlwind of rage and agony and fear. No one ever told him that disappointing would hurt more than protecting.

He commands the module “Level 9” with a hot bark and goes at it again. It’s not easy to push back those emotions, but he’s become a master of lying to himself over the past few years. He’s sure as hell going to try.

 _Days since extraction: thirty_ 17:11

“Why don’t you let someone else have a turn?” A voice calls from inside the room. It’s gruff and demanding and he registers it as Keith before turning around.

The comment pulls Shiro from his tormented outburst. He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but the ship’s night cycle has turned on. Upon ending the module he notices that his muscles ache. Not in the pleasant post work out way, but in a way that runs deeper to the place where flesh meets bone, indicating he’s pushed too far.

He’s greeted by the sight of Keith and Lance in the doorway, dressed casually and ready to train.

“I thought you’re on orders to not be in here together?” When they are one of two things happen. Dual bloody noses, black eyes, and a trip to the pods, or someone walks in on them in a state of undress. Luckily Shiro’s only been witness to the former, and not the latter.

“Yeah, but those are Coran’s orders,” Lance replies. “And respectfully, his orders don’t apply if he doesn’t know we’re here.”

“I’m not ready to stop yet.” I’ll move with the gladiator over to the second bay, and you two can use the main floor…Just don’t do anything stupid with me in here,” he adds.

“Instead of fucking up your rotator cuff on your real arm _again_ , why don’t you talk about it?”  Keith asks bluntly.

“Keith!” Lance’s voice raises an octave and he points his finger accusingly at Keith. “We were going to wait for this to crop up organically remember? People do that. It’s called timing.”

“You’re the one who spent the last 30 minutes crying because ‘Pidgeon’ was crying.”

“Look there’s not much to talk about.” Shiro gives one final wail on the gladiator scoring another K.O. for the evening. “I’m selfish.” He wants to rub at biological shoulder, but Keith’s comment stings far more than his overtaxed muscles.

Both Lance and Keith have moved to their designated space on the floor. They’re doing stretches, although Keith is pretty sure he can feel Lance undress him with his eyes, and he knows that Lance isn’t going to warm up properly. He’s not massaging any cramps this time.

“There is a very thin line between being selfish and self-preservation, boss.” Lance turns over and begins doing a few crunches for good measure.

“Don’t repeat this to anyone. Ever. But I think Lance is right.”

After that it doesn’t take long for Shiro to cool down and leave the training deck. Despite their good intentions, and the fact that he respected both of them, he really wasn’t in the mood to take relationship advice from two people, who no less than 24 hours ago, declared openly in the control room that they were, “done forever.”

 _Days since extraction: Thirty-four_ 08:34

It’s like an itch that Keith can’t scratch. It’s wedged between his shoulders, just far enough down his arms can’t reach. It’s that pesky little voice in the back of his mind that tells him to flee, or blow something up, or just make it out alive.

Despite all of red’s sensors displaying status normal, he wants to dart.

The mission is simple. Linear, clean, well defined roles and not a hole in it. It’s the way Shiro likes to run them.

It’s just tight enough for it to crumble in on the weight of itself.

They’re running maintenance on a Galra free planet’s satellites. .There are four stations in orbit, and here’s the thing about keeping Galra off your tail for ten thousand years, it’s real easy to get cut off from the rest of the universe’s tech.

There’s four stations. They don’t _need_ the green lion there…But he can’t explain why he has this ominous feeling in the pit of his gut. Nor can he explain why he feels connections to lions other than his own. When Shiro assigns them to work together he bites his tongue, and bottles it back. Keeps the itch at bay by swatting at it. Tells Allura before they depart over private channel, “Watch yourself out there.”

The instructions are overly detailed to the point of being obtuse. Hunk would’ve made a great instructor at the Garrison because he bores him to tears.

Never the less, he lets Allura do most of the work. It keeps her out of the cockpit. Everything goes according to plan. He checks all the transmitters, replacing ones that are hundreds if not thousands of years old. The external components crumble in his hands as he yanks them out, the internal beacons still sending an orange red pulse back to the planet below.

Open space still bothers him more than he’d like to admit. There’s something comforting about looking up at the sky from a scratchy military issue blanket or from one of the castles many viewing decks. It seems much smaller, more ethereal.

Now he’s just a speck among titans waiting for his pitiful meat sack of a body to get sucked out too far and incinerated like refuse.

But a mission’s a mission.

She does patch rewiring. It’s far more intricate than he has patience for.

Over the comm it seems like everyone else is able to go through the motions smoothly.

They’d expected Galra ships to come after them while they were changing the transmitters or resetting the force field.

They hadn’t expected the green lion to turn on its current paladin.

They’re all but finished. He’s doing one final go through on Hunk’s checklist, because it says so. Allura’s making her way back to the green lion via personal transporter.

You can’t hear a thing in space, even in the outskirts of atmosphere it’s little more than a pop and a sizzle, if his time hanging on in open airlocks is anything to go by…So other than that _feeling_ that’s all but dissipated by now. Instead, a nicely developed rage toward Hunk’s well intentioned instructions that he knows aren’t supposed to be condescending, but he can’t help but interpret them that way he has no idea, has blossomed.

Allura calls over the comm, “Keith, I believe I have a bit of a problem.”

He turns around, and before him he can see the green lion. Eyes brightly lit, roaring constantly. It won’t let Allura in. She drifts close enough to it, and it begins to swat at it’s current pilot.

He doesn’t think. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t even breathe in the time it takes for him to jet over to Allura and knock her sideways. They spin haphazardly for a while in the void of space while the green lion continues its tantrum.

“Shiro. We have a bit of a problem,” he says shakily over thee shared channel.

In the end, he has to take Allura back to the castle with him in the red lion. Shiro manages to get it to calm down. The black lion roars, and roars until the green lion tires and follows him back.

It’s eerie, seeing the paladin-less lion follow Shiro under it’s own volition back to the ship. Then again, it shouldn’t exactly surprise anyone. Pidge has been spending an increasing amount of his infinite free time laying on the green lion’s back or sitting on her paw. Shiro made good on his promise to bring Pidge back. He never said anything about having him back in the cockpit.

And Pidge hasn’t been forthcoming with any desire to be back at the helm.

Keith would never openly admit that he doesn’t exactly blame Pidge for that.

 _Days since extraction: thirty-five_ 13:54

Keith’s palms are dripping with sweat underneath his half gloves. He hadn’t expected Shiro to accept everything he and Lance said at face value immediately, but he also didn’t expect to have to go to these extreme measures. He and Pidge weren’t that close before. Pidge, despite being prickly and curt with everyone seemed to do it playfully and in a way that he was well liked.

He couldn’t deny the fact that before the accident, he was very envious of the paladin’s ability to be simultaneously loved and avoided.

Now? They seemed to both find solace in the fact that they missed certain references and lots and lots of social cues.

But this…This was overstepping a ton of boundaries and he risked not only making Pidge hate him but Shiro as well.

“Why have you brought me down here? I’m not injured,” Pidge says dryly. “I’ve got _nine,_ I’ve counted them in shock multiple times Keith. _Nine_ hard drives of unidentified time period or origin recovered from the soiree this morning sitting up in my lab right now. This needs to be good.”

It’s the kind of thing that Lance would urge him not to do. Physically wedge himself in front of a door or tackle him to keep him restrained and away from the pods. It’s something that he’d not only tell him not to do, but also be right about. It’s beyond tactless, but there’s not exactly a hard and fast rule of etiquette for “making your friends who used to whatever, but are now broken up, hate each other less after one of them dies, gets amnesia, and then remembers that they used to…whatever, after the other person purposefully withheld that information.”  Keith knows enough about tact to understand that much.

They’re working on borrowed time with Allura as the green paladin.

 These issues need to be resolved before he’s the one hauling Pidge up by the shirt and demanding that he get back into the lion.

Because Shiro certainly isn’t.

“Look. Shiro would probably kill me if he knew I was about to do this.”  Keith strides up to Shiro’s pod and enters the access code. He’s never reset his from default. Apparently he doesn’t care who climbs in there and stinks it up. Right now he’s grateful. “The two of you have always been super secretive about” He waves his gloved hands around in front of him a few times aimlessly.  “That. But you need to see this.”

“What do you mean Keith?”

Keith waits for the panel to retract and gestures for Pidge to get inside. “Shiro made a log of his memories. He started right after we lost you and kept going til….I don’t know he could still be doing it. You deserve to know.”

A taut silence grows between them.

“It’s unethical,” Pidge breathes in a long sigh.

“So is omitting the truth on Shiro’s end, and manufacturing false memories on yours. You’re not exactly blameless to begin with.” He physically bites the inside of his lip to stop himself from going on.  Lance is an insufferable bed hogging idiot, but he has taught him a thing or two about being less abrasive. He decides that he probably wouldn’t want him to be badgering the guy that died to get what he wants. He steers the conversation in another direction. “You want this too right? Sick of being so vulnerable all the time?”

Pidge takes the bait and strides past Keith into the tank.

“It smells like him,” Pidge comments.

Keith ignores it. He wants to say that it’s technically _Pidge’s_  tank, but Shiro has made it his own on account of being in it all the time, but he needs to let Shiro’s memories do the talking. “I’m setting this for thirty, but you can access it from the inside in replay mode.”

“Thanks” Pidge mouths from behind the glass.

“Don’t thank me yet. It’s not going to be easy.”

_Days before loss: Six_

_03:02 Altean Standard Time_

_“Do you believe in the witching hour Shiro?”_


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so there's still some angst in this one, but it is gonna have a fix it and make it better ending. Thanks for the comments, kudos, etc.

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 00:12_

Allura opens her jewelry box, and out spring four pastel colored mice in various states of disarray. The bigger mouse seems to be breaking up a squabble between the green and the blue. Meanwhile the fourth is shoving an entire piece of candy into his mouth while the two in the large mouse’s grasp look on in horror.

That manages to cheer her up a bit. She takes the creature, whose face is swollen with the bulk of the candy in it’s cheeks, into her hand and smiles. “It isn’t nice to be greedy Cho.” She pokes at its stomach playfully.

She moves onto the other mice, taking each one in her hand and patting it gently.

After she is done with the fourth mouse she reaches absentmindedly for her hairbrush. It’s made of a copper colored rose gold, and it bears her mother’s crest. A lioness surrounded by ivies, roses, and Altean succulents. She makes a few passes through her long blue white hair before letting out a long sigh and placing the brush back on the table.

“I’m so glad mother isn’t here to see this.”

By now everyone knew that Zarkon was the previous black paladin. Shiro had his suspicions that Alfor was the blue paladin. She had told him he was correct about those suspicions not long ago. What she hadn’t told any of the new paladins, and refused to tell them now, was that her mother Bea was the green paladin.

The largest mouse squeaks at her a few times.

“Improvement? What in the universe could you possibly mean. It all but tried to kill me today.”

The pink mouse steps up and wiggles its nose at her a few times.

“I suppose this is not the first time I’ve butted heads with the green lion, and she has let me board her.”

The yellow mouse strides forward and offers her a memory through their shared connection.  

Although it’s been ten thousand years, Allura remembers it like it was yesterday. The castle has returned to Altea, and with it, her mother and father. She darts from within the white marble and gild inlay walls of the academy and out onto the royal courtyard to greet the paladins.

She’s watched the castle land countless times, but she is continually amazed at the view. First the castle looms above the royal grounds. It’s presence darkens the suns and blocks out everything. Then, it begins its decent. It’s beauty and might is blocked out by the suns’ glare, but she can see the thruster towers extend outward in order to brace for impact.  The pale pink grass on the docking meadow undulates in a slow rolling wave as the castle makes its decent.

It whips her long untied hair all over the place, and she knows that father will scold her for having an unkempt appearance.

Finally, she can see the castle in all its glory, dark navy tones combine with hues of cyan and turquoise. It makes her knees weak, but she charges forward anyway. Because mother and father were on board.

She always dashes to Alfor first, his arms are infinite and welcoming. Then she moves onto mother. Her greetings are far more reserved, but equally as warm as father’s. Without fail she’ll take Allura’s hands into her own and squeeze lightly. Each time the words are genuine and the same, “It is so good to be with you again Allura.”

After the greetings are finished and the tears of happiness have been dried, she’s whisked away usually by Coran to get ready for an endlessly long, overly stuffy reception. However, “appearances must be kept Allura, what with the king and queen ruling remotely,” Coran reminds her usually between trying to comb her windswept hair and demanding that she clip her jagged and uneven fingernails.

“But you’ve been on missions before. I’m clearly old enough to be left alone if Mother and Father will let you go.”

“You’re forgetting one important detail Princess.” Coran finds an incredibly large tangle in her hair, and she’s amazed that he can simply walk off of the castle after months away and get right back to tending to her as if he’s never left. “Your uncle Streth and I are married now.  As much as I enjoy your company, it’s also very important that I stay at his side.”

She and uncle Streth weren’t related by blood, but she knows for a fact that he’s one of Father’s oldest friends. That position of trust is echoed by his status as the red paladin. “I want to go with you.”

“I think that’s something best brought up with your parents Princess.” He fastens a large silk bow to the top of her head and pats her on the shoulder. “But for now, I think you should set your sights on making it to dinner.”

It takes a record three and a half hours to make it out of the ballroom and steal her way into the hangar. She wants so badly to join her parents and their council in space, to become a paladin someday if need be.

She’s not deaf, she’s heard father commend the fact that she’s the top of the class: military strategy, physics, and applied mathematics. He’s heard his loud booming voice comment that she’d be a natural fit for the green lion when he’s had a bit too much to drink.

She makes her way into the hangar, past the blue, yellow, and red lions. Immediately she makes her way to the green lion. She would never overstep mother’s duties as the green paladin, but she’s sixteen and it’s time to join her family in space.

When mother was her age, father was giving her the green lion as a gift signifying his intent of courtship.

The least they could do is give her some kind of job drawing tactical strategies, or engaging in diplomatic meetings.  

She takes the freight elevator up to the green lion’s head, enters the cockpit, and is quickly ejected. It roars in response.

Somewhere between the deafening roar of the green lion and the reduced gravity of the hangar, Streth was there, catching her before she had the chance to make contact with the floor some fifty klacks below and bounce pathetically.

She feels a hot flush creep into her face. Coran must’ve said something to Uncle. He’d never leave a welcome home party when there were still drinks to be had.

The red paladin sets her down gently. “I won’t tell youre parents if you give yourself enough time to graduate the academy.”

 “Deal,” Allura stammers in response before she can comprehend the weight of the promise. That’s at least two more years, if her grades stay exactly the same.

Allura returns to the present and picks up a large silk scarf. It might be easier to wrap her hair tonight instead of combing it straight. She’s had a very long time to accept the fact that despite being bound to the lions, it is not her role to pilot any of them. The incident with the green lion tears these old wounds open anew. “I can’t help but think it’s time for Pidge to start piloting again.”

The purple mouse chirps in agreement.

“Although I’m not sure I exactly know how to best ask him. It’s something that’s outside even my own diplomatic training.”

The pink mouse ruffles the fur on the top of his head. He squishes it into a tight coif with a single tuft of bangs.

“Shiro? Oh I don’t know if that’s the best idea right now either Cho.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-five_ 18:56

In the end, it takes longer than Keith’s allotted thirty minutes.

 He knows that he died. Haggar made that apparent every day he was among the druids. Whenever she spoke it was always in a low exasperating drawl “I gave you another chance at life, and for this.” Or “The resurrection invocation requires a great deal of personal quintessence. I did not perform it in order to be repaid in such a fashion.”

Or of course his favorite, “You’re just like him. So ungrateful for what I have done.”

It makes sense now, given what he knows about Shiro, and what he knows about the Galra. It’s not just what he “knows” about Shiro through memory transfer or what he sees when the team goes out on a mission. No, it makes sense on a deeper more visceral level now that he knows Shiro as a person. There’s a constant agonizing pull between self-preservation and duty that threatens to tear both of them in half. Not to mention, there’s something grossly obstinate deep within both of them that forces them to push through even when giving up would be a much more attractive option.

 He thought that the pod would be less realistic, less tactile and interactive. He expect scrolling text based transcriptions of Shiro’s memories or something like a movie in front of him. When the milky black and white images of galaxies and system clear his vision, he expects to see glass again.

Instead he’s greeted by a likeness of Shiro.

His heart drops into his stomach creating a heavy feeling there. What if he had to watch Shiro die?

“I didn’t expect to see you here so soon Pidge,” he speaks softly like they’re sitting over breakfast. Like he hasn’t had his morning cup of coffee yet, and he hasn’t even opened his eyes properly.

“I didn’t expect to be here ever,” Pidge responds flatly.

Keith probably assumed that bringing him down here would lead to some kind of breakthrough. That he’d watch himself die through Shiro’s eyes and see the struggles that not only he, but the entire team went through without him. Somehow this would fix the big gaping hole in his chest, and everything would be back to normal.

It’s like running a bivariate correlation when there are countless other factors at play. He’s not drawing any conclusions yet.

“He’d never admit it,” Shiro speaks and Pidge has to ascertain that he’s referring to himself. “but it’s probably good that you are.”

Pidge nods absentmindedly.

“Come with me. Please?” He offers his hand and they walk out of the infirmary, down to the laboratory. Pidge knows it’s all an illusion but it feels so real. From the cold of his cybernetic hand in his, to the sound of their armored boots clanging loudly in the large empty castle corridors. The space between them is magnetic. Even though Pidge is beyond livid at the _real_ Shiro there is a vulnerable part of him that wants to close the physical space between himself and _memory_ Shiro.

They stop for a moment, halfway between the infirmary and the main library at Pidge’s favorite portrait on the castle. It’s of a very large, doe eyed, overweight feline with a hat strapped in-between its ears. It looks absolutely miserable. It’s being held by an equally large, overweight, and doe eyed man with two heads and two hats which match the cat’s. One face looks beyond pleased. The other face’s expression matches the cats.

It never fails to make him laugh. There’s so much emotion there between the three pairs of matching yellow green eyes.

“I avoided looking at this awful thing for three months.”

“Painful to look at?”

“No.” He squeezes Pidge’s hand slightly. “It’s still funny. Too funny. You made up these really intricate backstories for all of them. Ether and Ethan are the men and the cat…You called him Brussel sprout. They go to market all the time, and Ether makes them gets new hats. Sprout has a very intricate plan to kill both of them…I couldn’t look at it while you were gone…because I felt so much guilt whenever I felt those little pangs of joy.”

Pidge tries his best to swallow the lump growing at the base of his throat.

Every day since he fell out of the pod, he saw Shiro impermeable and rigid. What he didn’t see was the nights Shiro spent alone, walking through the lab aimlessly in a state of total loss. In the pod he can feel Shiro’s tears well up and be kept at bay. Constantly. Hour after hour, day after day. The stinging at the ducts of his eyes is such a constant pressure it makes his head hurt.

“You know that feeling, when you walk into a room but forget why you’re there?”

Pidge nods.

“It was like that. Every day, all the time.”

How would he feel if he watched Shiro die? How would he feel if he watched and couldn’t do anything about it?

A part of Pidge pulls deeply at the side of himself that is always cold. The part of him that stares too long at Shiro and wants to please him. “You had to find ways to protect yourself?” Shiro gave himself to everyone freely, and this just happened to be thing that pushed him over the edge.

“As did you,” he says as the watch a second Shiro, the one that is Shiro as he sees himself. His fingers aimlessly ghost across books and gadgets looking for some kind of undiscovered significance. “I think there’s a reason that I don’t remember what happened to me while I was held captive, and you don’t remember much of anything from before.”

“What do you mean?”

The scenery of the lab disappears and Pidge and Shiro are left with memory Shiro against inky blackness. He’s seated at the chessboard.

Pidge squats down to observe the stationary game, and look at Shiro. His complexion is whiter than his hair. It’s exaggerated by deep purple black circles under his eyes.

“Remembering what I did in captivity would break me. Make me unable to function…less than I do now. Remembering the things before would put your actions in captivity into context, that would make you unable to function…” He pauses for a moment. “I think it was another way to tear the team apart too.”

“Seems to be more effective than any of us would like to admit,” Pidge admits without sugarcoating it. Shiro’s honesty and vulnerability was appreciated, but it still pulls at the dark angry side within him that demands answers. He’s not having this conversation with Shiro directly. He’s having it with a paired down selectively created version of him.

It’s hard to take it at absolute value.

Then again, how would he feel if he watched Shiro die, only to be entrusted with healing him. When he himself was a broken man?

“Do you want to see anything else?”

Pidge jumps on the directness. They walk wordlessly, further into the void. “More about you.”

In the depths of the pod he sees Shio stripped down, past the title of black paladin and beyond the highly functional shell of a man who gave everything despite seemingly having nothing.

He sees love hidden there. So much love for everyone on the castle. It’s made apparent when they walk to the hangar and watch him going to the green lion before missions. On each visit he asks for more time for Allura. Sometimes its something vague like “Pidge needs more time”. After the botched satellite repair, he simply begs for one more mission. Watching him beg like this…It feels like a punch to the gut.

In person, Shiro’s leadership comes across as the perfect mixture of unwavering determination and breakneck on the fly decision making.

He never understood how much diplomacy was involved behind the scenes. Shiro’s role as the leader didn’t mean making the right decision. It meant keeping the peace.

They move from the hangar to the common room. He’s seated in between Lance and Hunk on the sofa. There are spent boxes of tissues littered everywhere. If his diary entries are anything to go by, Lance and Hunk have always been unafraid to cry. It’s part of the reason he likes them so much.

Tucked between them on the sofa, Shiro has listening to Lance and Hunk tell stories about Pidge during their time at the Garrison. Each story seems to pull at Shiro’s heart and make him want to push things down deeper. It’s painfully apparent that he wants to do anything other than talk about the loss.  Unconditionally helps them grieve, even though the transmission file makes it apparent that there’s so much pain as he listens.

Then, they walk back to the lab. Shiro’s combing through the impossibly large dataset Keith assembled right after he went missing.

He’s seen Hunk’s report. It took far more advanced statistical tests than what they teach pilot cadets in the Garrison. Never the less, Shiro is dedicated to trying his hardest to understand. He watches Hunk with fascination as he performs the correct tests and patiently interprets the data.

“So you see,” Shiro speaks again as they leave the lab. “It hasn’t exactly been easy.  

“Yeah,” Pidge breathes in sharply and grabs at his chest. The panel aches. It certainly going to take more time to mend the tears in he and Shiro’s friendship. However, it would be a bold face lie, much like Coran’s insistence that a quong fish tasted just like fatty tuna,  to say that this didn’t help. He wasn’t yet ready to admit that it did soften something in there, the place that was carved out and reshaped for druid devices.

What if he’d watched Shiro die?

He was just getting to know Shiro once more…but even now given the paper thin liking between them, he wouldn’t want to see it be torn apart.

Pidge has seen the connection between them before the failed rescue mission. He’s seen their touch and go relationship develop and fizzle through tormented dreams and reluctant memory transfers. He’s got cloudy inclinations that it’s tumultuously been flared up again and again. Shiro laying his head in his lap while reading, or Pidge asking him to sleep next to him the night before the mission.

Pidge gives Shiro’s hand a final squeeze. “Thank you.”

“I hope it helps.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-five_ 18:56

After hours he leaves the pod with weak knees and a clouded mind…but he knows that something has to be done.

“I thought you were going to lock yourself in there forever.”

He’s surprised to see that Keith is still there after all of this time. He’s got Lance all but draped over his shoulder. Together, they seem to be reading some kind of obscenely bright colored comic book.

“I had to see everything. I’m not exactly in a rush to get back in there.”

Keith nods.  

“Will you help me back to my room? My legs don’t feel right.”

“Sure thing Pidgeon,” Lance replies snapping the book shut.

“Did it help anything at all?” Keith asks after hoisting one arm over his shoulder. Lance appears to his right and wraps an arm around his waist. The way they flank him is almost suffocating.

“Maybe,” He breathes sharply after a few steps. “Can we stop? My glasses are slipping.

“I gotcha Pidge,” Lance replies pushing the spectacles up his nose.

“It’s hard to measure human behavior objectively. Especially when you’re biased by your own feelings.”

A silence envelops the three of them. “Can we actually go back to the lab?”

A twin pair of groans come from either side of him. “That’s in the opposite direction.”

 

_Days since extraction: thirty-five_ 23:47

“You’re just like him. So ungrateful for what I have done.” If his recovered memories are like knocking over a cup of tea, Haggar’s comment is like the last remaining drops that dribble out slowly. Possibly on top of your head while you’re trying to mop up the mess.

Pidge’s ability to walk without going knock kneed has returned, and it’s taking every almost ounce of energy he’s got to not go down to the hangar and sit in the green lion’s cockpit and stare wide eyed mouth agape at the controls. It’s taking the rest of his energy to not hike over to the starboard library and find Shiro.

Not knowing what he’d do in either situation ultimately keeps him here. It keeps him in the lab, pacing back and forth.

It’s not like he doesn’t have anything to do. He’s got the nine recovered hard drives from the satellite repair mission. But he can’t dismiss the sound of Haggar’s voice from his head. He can’t shake the feeling that the high Druid priestess is towering over him while he works on various technologies.

He can’t get the image of thousands of machines scattered out on the floor in Haggar’s grand hall, but he reaches for a tool kit anyway. Sitting idle isn’t going to help him.

He scratches at the screws that are almost molded into the casing with a screwdriver. Their external casing is corroded, almost to the point of crumbling in his hands. According to the mission log, the parts that aren’t about the green lion losing it, this is typical. The tech is centuries old.

Allura predicts they may contain valuable information on cloaking techniques used for the past few millennia to avoid Galra scrutiny. Hunk is suspicious that they’re so corroded on the outside, yet _perfectly_ functional. Pidge looked over the files while everyone else was on the mission. He’s inclined to agree. Frequency analysis has revealed not a single missed transmission, except for very recently…within the past five months or so. It’s the identical time, identical date, identical error across all nine machines.

Hunk would probably like to be here when he pried open these machines and began the data recovery process. He can already see his lips draw into a pout and his eyes grow wide in a silent plea.

Hunk should’ve considered that before he dropped them off in his lab, said they were a gift, and then had the audacity to have a regular, before midnight bedtime.

Didn’t matter, Hunk would be awake by the time the files came in anyway.

The screws continue to come out with extreme difficulty. He strips out several of the screw heads and has to resort to other means such…Such as the precision 3mm cutting torch with the blue and white handle that is quickly becoming his favorite thing in the world.

  He tries _not_ to think about how this could get done even faster with one supercharged Galra grip. He also tries _not_ to think about how Shiro is probably awake right now and would rip these casings off without disconnecting a single wire or shorting any circuits. His time in the tank has raked hot coals of empathy over his conscious, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need time to absorb everything and recalibrate his feelings.

He removes the first casing, and his mouth goes slack at what he sees. Carefully he dusts off the rust debris from the casing, but it’s redundant. He can see everything clearly. The insides of the casing are a stark contrast to the exterior. Where the outsides are mottled, rusted, and pockmarked, the internal machinery is polished and undamaged. It looks like brand new tech.

Not to mention there’s no mistaking the symbol soldered into the auxiliary power supply panel. It’s a sloppy doodle of a person’s face. Big glasses with cartoon style spirals across the lenses. A devious smile, and a haphazard haircut.

He’s seen it countless times scratched in the corner of his own diary and copied into the syntax of his own code.

“Are you kidding me?” Pidge murmurs under his breath.

It’s a waste of precious time, but Pidge moves forward anyway as if he is possessed by the _need_ to confirm what the sinking feeling in his gut already knows. He finds the discarded torch, which was hidden underneath the discarded hard drive casing and goes to work on the others.

In no time he’s surrounded by nine cartoon likenesses of his face. It takes a quick scan to learn that these are botnet technologies designed to activate on Galra command and compromise the planet.

His first instinct is to go find someone, probably Shiro and rally the team. But what would they do? How many planets were these installed on? Was he responsible for the design only? Judging by the insignia on each, it seemed like he had more to do with the creation of the system than simple design. He takes a moment to breathe deeply. He takes a moment to remove his glasses and rub his eyes. He remembers Hunk’s suggestion to take a moment and count backwards from ten.

He increasingly tries to ignore Keith’s suggestion that, “That doesn’t do anything.”

He can feel his chest constrict every time he breathes. It feels like he’s in Voltron’s green fist getting crushed around the middle, and suddenly he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe but he can feel a thunderous hammering in his ears and in his chest.

Someone’s screaming too, and it does nothing to ease the bloody swath of fear that’s been ripped out of his soul.

Then there’s hands on him. He wants to flee, wants to fight with the treacherous might that he knows Haggar buried in the hole where his heart used to be, but he can’t. The body pinning him is stronger.

“Pidge, come back to me. “

“Pidge, breathe.”

And as soon as it begins, he realizes that he is the one screaming. That’ he’s not being pinned, but Shiro is there offering a soothing touch on his arms and his shoulders.  

“It’s going to be okay Pidge.”

Pidge takes another few sharp breaths, the last of which are accented by hiccups.

A few moments pass by and the only sounds in the lab are Pidge’s gradually evening breaths and hiccups. Shiro waits for a while before he speaks. “Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need anything?”

Pidge catches his arm before he can even form a response. “I need you to not leave right now.”

“Okay.”

“Shiro,” he points to the hard drives with his “signature” exposed. “What have I done?”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking there will be one more chapter left to tie up loose ends etc. Thanks to those that have kept up regularly. This is officially my longest fic ever (including my days on LJ and Fanfic100).

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 00:14_

Although this isn’t the first time he’s had to comfort Pidge in the middle of an episode, he cannot deny how the strangeness of being on the other side. He’s used to Pidge ripping him out of a panic attack with a guttural cry of, “Shiro”, and then demanding him to breathe. He’s used to the familiar press of Pidge’s fingers on the inside of his biological arm taking his pulse and waiting for him to calm down.

It feels like a giant weight is lifted off of his shoulders when Pidge’s breaths first begin to slow, then begin to even out. It’s an even bigger wave of relief, when can verbalize what he needs.

So it almost knocks the wind out of him when he finally realizes what has induced Pidge’s panic attack.

It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. They’d had a very frank and very open discussion about this only a few days after Pidge had emerged from the tank. He remembered specific projects, but not always their function. With no major clues on what to look for, it was only a matter of time before they had to fight against their greatest asset.

Despite the fact that they’d tried to prepare for it, it shakes him to the core. Not as much as it does Pidge, but enough to evoke the flight or fight responses that make him act before he thinks. As soon as Pidge’s breathing stills, he grabs Pidge up under his arm by the middle. His legs kick aimlessly behind him. Pidge’s torso droops forward, and he swats lamely at his ankles in Shiro’s sloppy grasp.

His main objective is not to understand what Pidge did, or what impact it has. His main objective is to get Pidge somewhere, anywhere, that is not the lab. He knows exactly what it is like to have moments of lucidity in-between episodes. It’s hell teetering between reality and the past. If he can do anything about it he’s going to keep Pidge firmly grounded _here_ in the castle, and away from Haggar’s great hall.

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 00:23_

Lance’s room is closest to the lab, and he does want to wake Hunk and Allura up and start getting a handle on what is going on. So he starts pounding on Lance’s door. Five booming knocks in and Lance opens the door, rubbing the sleep from one eye. “What the hell Shiro?”

“Sit with him. He doesn’t need to be alone.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not critical yet. Just sit with him. Please.”

Shiro puts Pidge down among protests of “Shiro I’m fine.” And “Put me down, this is not how you keep someone calm.” He complies, bending at the knee so Pidge’s feet touch the floor and then releases him around the middle.

Pidge rights himself and pushes his glasses up the nose with a long winded exhale.

“You got it boss.” Lance says through a yawn.

“Pidge, trust me,” he says trying his hardest to maintain eye contact and not looking at his arm. “We need to understand what’s going on, but you do not need to be in that room while it happens.”

Pidge opens his mouth as if he wants to respond.

“Trust me on this please.”

Pidge closes his mouth and then opens it again once more to speak. “Roger Shiro.”

“When we need you, and we will, I’ll come for you.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 00:26_

“Shiro, this better be good. I was sawing logs like a big burly 19th century Canadian dude,” Hunk says in between yawns behind him. He’s about seven paces ahead, aiming for Allura’s room. She needs to know about this too, and collectively they all need to know that at the very least those machines won’t kill them.

He knocks gently on Allura’s door.

“Oh come on you were not that nice about hauling me out of bed.”

He knocks again just to appease the angry sleep deprived part of Hunk that’s lashed out. Little does he know it has nothing to do with chivalry or being nice for the sake of being nice to a princess. He’d accidentally woke Allura once when she’d fallen asleep slumped against the castle’s main controls. It wasn’t pretty.

She jumped and flailed with such a start that she rocked the back of her head into his chin. It left him with a slightly bloodied lip and a bruised ego. Decorated Garrison pilot, and survivor of the Galra arenas.... Injured in the field by a sleeping princess.

She comes to the door faster than either of them anticipated. “Yes? Oh Shiro. Hunk? What ever seems to be the problem?”

“There’s something you need to see in the lab. It’s the hard drives we recovered from the previous mission.”

“What is it Shiro?” She pulls a pale pink robe around her long white nightgown.

“Remember how we weren’t exactly sure what Pidge was doing the entire time he was being held captive?” Hunk interjects.

“We have a much clearer idea now,” Shiro continues. “And we need to make sure we’re not in any immediate danger. Then, we need to figure out where all of these things are.”

“Sounds simple,” Allura supplies in an exhausted tone.

They reach the door to the lab. Shiro enters the access code and throws on the light, revealing the nine suspicious machines.

“Yeah,” he can’t mask the venom in his voice now. “Beyond simple.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 00:28_

“Woah dude you were not kidding when you said this was messed up,” Hunk supplies from behind his shoulder. “Where should I even start?”

“I don’t know Hunk,” Shiro admits with a tinge of frustration in his voice. He’s totally out of his element here, but he knows its not exactly fair to just expect Hunk to step in and take charge. It’s not in his personality to overstep even he thinnest and most superficial of boundaries. “Make sure it’s not going to kill us first I guess…” He trails off before being pulled back to reality. Images of Pidge hyperventilating in front of him cloud his vision. “Then find out whatever you can about them.”

Hunk is already kneeling in front of the group of machines. He’s picked the one nearest to him and furthest from Allura. He’s got one hooked up to his laptop. The other he wants to take apart and look at it’s circuitry. “Allura, can you get me some of those tools over there.”

“Sure,” she brings over Pidge’s tool kit.

Hunk is nose deep in the scan looking at output from the first machine. He doesn’t even look away from the screen while he asks, “Is there a cutting torch in there?”

“Yes there seems to be.”

His eyes are still glued to the output. “Will you get it ready for me? We’re taking one of these other ones apart while we wait for a comprehensive scan to finish.

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 00:32_

“Allura,” Shiro warns from where he stands nearby. “If you’re going to hand it to him, do it the other way. You’ll burn him with the cutting end if you don’t”

The comment pulls Hunk away from the output and back towards Allura who was in fact, about to hand him the flaming end of a cutting torch. This was what he was graced with. Brains, muscle, beauty, and cunning all wrapped in the form of six other high functioning morons…But he can’t help but include himself as functionally moronic too.  It made for a perfect mess of a dynamic in which to save the universe.

“Alright. Let’s hope this isn’t a bomb,” he says as he sucks in air through clenched teeth.

“If you’re worried about that,” a fourth voice chimes in from the threshold, “Wouldn’t a scanning device be helpful?” Keith strides into the room seemingly not fearing in the slightest that it could in fact be a bomb.

“Right,” Just who invited him to the emergency bomb diffusion/druid harddrive scanning party? “I didn’t know we had one of those,” he admitted. He had a drafting table in here, but it was rarely used. He much preferred the unused main floor office. It had most of the tech he needed, but it was much closer to the kitchen.

“I know where that is,” Shiro moves from his spot near the outer machines and goes to the tools hanging on the wall over the workbench. “Hunk, will this work?” He waves the tool at the yellow paladin.

“Yeah, that’ll do.”

Shiro brings him the device and Hunk waves it over all of the individual hard drives, not just the one he was moments away from cutting into (after he burned his hand). “I’m not detecting any explosive, volatile, or otherwise toxic or deadly materials in these,” Hunk replaces the scanning wand into the main component of the scanner. “So that’s good.”

He kneels back at his spot next to the machine he’s decided to look into for parts. It shouldn’t be hard to see what’s going on in there, and still make it easy enough to get an output of all stored files and processes. “Shiro, Keith, Allura,”

In an instant three pairs of eyes are on him.

“Will you hook the rest of the machines into my own computers? We should see what is on all of them.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 01:17_

“Dude would you mind telling me what’s going on? I know you and _Keith_ are doing something cool without me,” Lance chimes over the comm. “Like I know it’s gotta be juicy because ONE, Shiro like basically threw Pidgeon at me and told me to watch over him. That’s like…Literally never happened. TWO Keith fucking darted and hasn’t been back to bed since.”

“Uh well,” Hunk supplies lamely over the private channel. “Something weird is going on, but we’re still not exactly sure what.”

“Like HOW weird are we talking here?” Lance replied

“Should you even be talking about this out loud? The whole reason you’re with Pidge is to keep his mind off of…” He gestures to the hard drives, but then realizes that Lance cannot see where he’s gesturing, and has no idea what they’ve actually found.

“He’s actually kind of passed out. In my bed, so I can’t go back to sleep…You know what he seemed fine before nodding off. I’m coming down to the lab.”

Before he can protest that someone should be with Pidge, Coran’s busting into the lab. His hair is pulled into several hot rollers, and Hunk can’t catch the booming laugh that blossoms from deep within his gut despite the deadly serious expression that Coran wears.

“I don’t know what this is about, but it looks like something I should know about.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 01:35_

Lance had insisted that Pidge was in fact, knocked out to a point that was almost scary. Hunk himself had only seen Pidge asleep a handful of times in the course of their multi-year friendship. It didn’t stop Shiro from sneaking away to check on him once Lance showed up at the lab and Shiro could delegate his tasks to Lance.

Silently Hunk decides that couples who can physically see each other every day are overprotective to the point of being weird. They’re and totally cute or adorable about it.  

“What can you tell us so far?” Shiro asks upon his return.

“Well…” Hunk makes a fast second glance at the few printed output pages he has scattered about the room and then turns back to the ongoing analysis. “We have seven of the nine machines scanned. Looking at the hardware,” he gestures to the dissected machine they’d squabbled over earlier. “These are regular old hijacking devices encased in crappy shells. Maybe druid magic since they’re designed to look like they’re hundreds of years old, but really aren’t.“ 

“But, Pidge’s strength is in programming,” Shiro interjects.

“Right,” Hunk replies. “So what we have, here I _think_ ….We will need Pidge’s eyes on this eventually….Is a highly advanced machine learning algorithm. It records and sends back info on interplanetary arrivals and departures, then through linear regression predicts when the next movements will be.” He shuffles the pages around a bit more. “They’re not going to waste Pidge on simple surveillance though. It would help if he made some kind of notes or commented his code. He was always railing on me about that back at the Garrison, but he doesn’t think he has to do it. My best guess right now is that the current method of charging in, squeezing out all the quintessence, and enslaving the local population isn’t as feasible as it once was with Voltron back on the scene. These devices are designed to be distributed unnoticed and then bring down integral life sustaining systems.”

“Like what?” Keith asks.

“Well…Anything really. The planet we pulled these from had their entire crop infrastructure tended to by automated system, as was their water distribution. So flip the switch on these, and on a planet of mostly artists, monks, and not very many scientists to repair the infrastructure you’re going to have a lot of problems.”  

“They’re using our own team member against us in order to render our own techniques useless.” Lance says.

“It would be very hard to Voltron our way out of one of these attacks. Stuff like infrastructure takes years to rebuild after it’s been gutted. And this code is nasty. It could take a lot of economies back to very primitive times very quickly. You wanna know the good news though?”

Shiro raises an eyebrow.

“Depends on your definition of good news,” Coran quips.

“No I promise I’m not being facetious.  Seriously there’s something potentially cool happening here.”

Hunk flips to the last page of output and circles a seven identical data points across one specific day in bright red marker. He can feel everyone else in the room lean in closer to see what he was marking. “So when these were installed, they did respond with an error message in turn. HOWEVER!” Hunk’s voice grows louder and the group huddled around him winces slightly.

Allura moves to not so subtly cover her ears.

“They were deactivated, without producing an error message nearly three months after they were installed.”

“Would it be possible for someone else to come back in later and deactivate the algorithms unnoticed?” Shiro asks over his shoulder.

“It seems that way,” Hunk turns back to his laptop screen.

Keith looks up from his knife blade for the first time in hours. “Who would be able to do that?”

“A freakin genius that’s who. Do you know how many times I’ve tried to get into Pidge’s files? He has a very embarrassing photo of me from boot camp, and I would literally do anything to eradicate it from the known universe.” Hunk closes out of the analysis program had been running frantically on his laptop. “Anyway, Shiro I think I’ve done all I can for tonight. I’ve got the data pulled, so Pidge can look at it without getting near the machines if he wants.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 02:25_

“Oh no you don’t.” Lance, feigning annoyance runs a few steps in front of him. He skids to a stop in front of his room in his sock feet.

It catches Shiro by surprise so that he bumps into Lance’s tall lanky frame, and accidentally pushes him into the door frame.  

“You’ve gotta do something with him. I can’t sleep in my chair, the floor sucks, and for someone so small, I can’t physically move him over.”

 A smile washes over Shiro’s face as he peeks into the room. Pidge is spread eagle, taking up every inch of space in a bed that was large enough for two. He strides over the threshold, scoops Pidge up into his arms and turns on his heel. “Thank you Lance.”

“I get it.” Lance goes rigid on his feet and pulls his arm into a half-hearted Garrison salute. “Gotta be the leader. Gotta take care of Pidgeon.” He softens his expression and moves his hands into mock little wings flapping at Shiro.”

“Maybe between the six of us we’ll manage.”

 “Yeah yeah, but a man’s gotta get his beauty rest. So…” He flops onto the bed and scratches his stomach. “Shut the door will you?”

“Night Lance.”

Shiro’s mouth tugs into a half smile as he hears from behind the closed door, “Night Shiro. Night Pidgeon.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 02:29_

“So, Pidge…Where do you want to sleep tonight?” he says under his breath. He shifts the smaller man’s weight in his arms so that Pidge’s head was rested on his shoulder. He usually sleeps in the lab. He’s spent more nights than he’d like to admit waking up on the couch with an ache in his neck and Pidge at his side in a bundle of blankets on the floor.

But returning him to the site of his panic attack seems cruel.

He never sleeps in his room. Even after the rescue he’s taken more to sleeping in the hangar with the lions or curling up on one of the soft rugs in the starboard library.

If they hadn’t had the falling out, he’d take him back to his room and sleep on the floor without second thought.

“Starboard library it is them.” He decides and heads to the back of the ship.  

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 05:00_

Shiro wakes up suddenly. It’s a quick jerk of the muscles that pulls him upright and forces his eyes to snap open wide.

He’s greeted to the sight of Pidge staring wide eyed back at him. He’s sitting up on the large cream colored sofa in the library, without his glasses on, just taking him in and offering nothing in response.

“Pidge what the quiznack?” In he takes a moment to let his pulse return to normal. They were definitely going to have a discussion about that later…On what to do, and definitely what not to do around people who woke with a start in cold sweats. People who had a fleeting grasp on reality and could be transported back to the past in a moments notice. People like him…People like them.

“Just wondering why I’m here. I was with Lance last.”

Shiro lays back down and drapes his cybernetic arm up over his head. “He wanted his bed back…And I didn’t think you should be alone.” He covers his eyes with his arm because he can feel Pidge burning twin holes in him with his gaze. “And I didn’t think you’d want to wake up in my room.”

Since he’s laid back down he can’t see Pidge anymore but he can hear the rustle of the blanket as Pidge pulls it downward. “Is that helpful for you? When you have…” his voice trails off.

“Yeah.”

Pidge’s legging clad feet hit the floor, and in an instant he’s kneeling down on Shiro’s sleeping bag with a pillow in tow. “I’m still mad at you. You know that right?”

“Yeah….” Shiro says in an exasperated tone.

“I like the floor better.”

“Does that mean I can get onto the couch?” He can feel his back growing stiffer every minute he stays on the floor.

“Absolutely not. I need you to tell me more. What works for you. How you keep that from happening.”

“Oh well,” Shiro tries not to think about the absurdity of all this. Inches to his left is the universe’s best sofa. He knows this because he’s put a lot of mileage on it in here reading many novels while Allura thinks he’s reading Altean tactical books.  It’s completely empty, and he’s stuck in his worse for the wear, and definitely musty, sleeping bag while crammed to double occupancy. “I think you explained it to me best once. Our brains have gotten so accustomed to living under constant stress that we get used to it. So the panic, comes from uncertainty when we’re out of that environment. It’s an inability to cope with the fact that on a day to day basis we’re free, relatively safe, and around people that care about us.”

“I said that?”

“That was the jist of it. You read out loud the entire DSRM chapter on PTSD and panic disorders. Then you proceeded to show me stock MRI images of brains that had experienced physical damage due to PTSD. Inflamed amygdales, fun stuff.”

“So I didn’t say it best at all.” Shiro can hear the pout in his voice trailing off and dripping with sarcasm. He’s so sick of being forced to feel all of these conflicting emotions at once when he’s around Pidge. Delight that he’s sounding Pidge like more and more combined with the pain that comes along with talking about panic disorders and all the awful things that go with them. It makes him feel like he’s got a boulder on his chest.

“You did though.” Shiro insists. “You gave me all the information. You explained everything in great detail, and answered questions when you could. More importantly you didn’t treat me like a piece of glass ready to break. You treated me like a person who needed to know everything.”

He turns to look at Pidge but his sand brown mop is turned away from him, so he continues. “I can’t explain the DSRM to you…and I know I haven’t always been direct with you…but I can try.”

Pidge goes silent for a moment keeping him on the precipice of uncertainty and redemption. “Okay.” He finally speaks. “You can start rectifying past behavior by letting me know what you found on those hard drives.”

“Quite a few things that Hunk can catch you up on in the morning…They’re really advanced cyberterrorism devices, but someone stopped the malicious programs after they were installed. We don’t think any damage actually occurred due to those machines.”

Pidge turns to him and his eyes go wide. “Really!?”

“Yes, really.”

“I guess that’s a decent place to start looking into a way to shut the rest of them down. Wherever they are.”

“The Galra are going to start attacking in different ways. Voltron is too strong. Throwing monsters at us isn’t good enough anymore. It just so happens that they’ve taken something very close to you and turned it against you. Nobody blames you for those devices Pidge.”

After a few moments of stiff silence, Pidge pulls the blanket that he’s dragged from the bed down to the floor across them both. In a sleep laden voice repeats his warning from earlier, “I’m still mad at you Shiro.”

_Days since extraction: thirty-six 07:02_

“Morning Pidge,” Shiro says unassumingly over the comm like he’s trudged into the galley for breakfast, amber colored hair shoved in every which direction and eyes barley open.

“Already?” Pidge swears through the channel.

Quite frankly he’s impressed. Like, he thought that a lifetime being in or around the military had prepared him for every linguistic combination of filth in existence, but he can’t help but feel like he should take notes. There’s every foul word or phrase he knows in English, plus Altean, Spanish, and probably just for him, Japanese. It’s art, and he should be taking notes.

“I am prepared for the scolding, but I’m not going back to the castle.”

“Scolding?” Shiro raises an eyebrow. He takes a moment to adjust his forward cameras so that the green lion comes directly into view. He’s still quite a few thousand kilometers away, but the speck of green among the jagged archipelagos of the asteroid filed is unmistakable. “I can’t exactly scold you for taking the green lion out after being off duty for over four months….”

‘Right after a panic attack,’ He says, but only after he makes sure the channel is muted and Pidge cannot hear.

“Because it’s the same kind of vaguely dangerous and very emotional thing I would do. Honestly.”

“So if I’m not in trouble why are you here? I looked over Hunk’s analysis. I know how to disable these things in the same way the recovered specimens were. And, based on the signals produced, I obviously was able to find a patch.”

Ouch. The venom is back, and the temporary truce between them is gone.

“Because.” He gives the map on the control panel a tap. They’ve got five minutes max. “Before you can deactivate those, you’re gonna have company.”

Another, shorter string of curses. They’re like a profane haiku. “How did I miss this?”

Shiro knows. He’s seen Pidge get enveloped in his work before. The impact of an atom bomb couldn’t tear Pidge away from a project when he was in a state of flow.

“I don’t think I’m ready for combat,” His voice hikes upward and cracks.

“I know,” Shiro replies. “I told you I wasn’t here to scold. Hide on one of the larger asteroids. I’ll handle this.”

“What if they are Galra?”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Keith comes over the shared channel.

“Yeah, the old fashioned way, with Voltron.” Hunk adds.

“Don’t worry Pidgeon, we’ve got you covered.” Lance finishes.

Yeah, Shiro should’ve taken notes when Pidge was cursing him to filth, because what part of stay in formation and stay off the channel did they not understand?  He specifically said that he wanted to try to handle this on his own to minimize any shame or embarrassment Pidge might feel…Scratch everything he said about the DSRM just a few hours ago. Everyone was getting a primer, and then they were going to have to write 1000 words on why they messed up.

In a surprising turn of events for once they’d brought a gun (or four, or five depending on if you counted the green lion as still being in play) to a knife fight. It was almost refreshing.

The ship was huge, and using some kind of minovsky particle displacing program to do two things. First the ship appeared much bigger on radar, and second the program made it look like there was an entire fleet of ships out there.

What actually greeted them was a single repair ship. The entire thing was smaller than the castle’s control room. It seemed to have weapons haphazardly tacked on from other vessels as an afterthought.

For a moment Shiro thought they would surrender, or at the very least explain _why_ they were an unmarked ship near Galra stealth tech in _neutral_ territory…Instead the ship barreled through the blue, red and yellow lion before charging forward. It fired erratically, and the patched together guns seemed to pack quite a punch.

Several smaller asteroids were blown to smithereens.  

Shiro jetted out from behind the rather large lion he’d hidden Black behind.  He maneuvered the black lion between a line of larger asteroids directly in the ships path. With jaw blades drawn he intercepted the ship and forced it to cease acceleration.

Over the shared channel an unseen person begged, “I surrender. I mean, please just let me go. I’m like you, not Galra.”

That voice…It pinched at past memories while he tried to place it. _No._

Both Pidge and Shiro stammered over the control in unison, “Matt!?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay one more chapter after to tie it all back to ShrioPidge

“Shiro, I’m nervous.” He says for the fourth time in the span of less than a minute. The passage from the primary hangar to the secondary hangar is relatively small compared to other distances on the castle, only about 70 meters. There is a moving sidewalk going either direction, but Pidge has opted to shuffle towards the secondary hangar by foot.

And because of this, so has Shiro.

“Like so nervous.” Pidge stops in the center of the two moving walkways and Shiro bumps into him for what must be the third time.

“Breathing Pidge, breathing is good right now,” but it’s just as much a reminder for himself as it is for Pidge.

“I just really can’t believe it.”

Shiro knows exactly what he means. They’ve confirmed visually through video. Pidge has asked him several questions that only he would know.  Shiro has asked him several questions that only he would know, but the transmissions leading up to the failed rescue mission still burn fresh in their minds.

Slowly, after Pidge can’t make his steps any smaller, they find themselves against the secondary hangar door. Shiro stands behind him and places a hand on his shoulder. “Whatever it is going on up there,” he taps Pidge’s temple lightly. “Try to just….turn down the volume a little bit.”

Pidge inhales deeply.

Shiro does the same.

“I don’t have to tell him everything that’s happened at once. I don’t have to explain what I don’t understand. If it’s him everything will fall into place.” His voice cracks and shakes. He’s trying to convince himself, and not doing a very good job.

“You’re right though Pidge. You can’t fully prepare for what’s behind the door, but there are some things in your favor. First, you’re not confronting it alone. Second, you’ve had firsthand experience with how information should…and should not be given after a long separation.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure you want me to go with you?” I can stay outside, and you can contact me if you need me.”

“No…” Pidge places his hand on the chrome handle to the off white colored door. “I want you with me.”

“Okay.” Shiro’s hand goes to the panel and actually enters the code. Prolonging this wasn’t going to settle either of their nerves.

He can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Pidge cry. Every single one of them has been tied to Matt in some way.  He’s cried restrained tears that were wrenched out of him with a great deal of force and hostility when he remembered they’d met in Galra captivity. Pidge has wailed openly in his arms when Shiro confessed that he knew the secret. They were big sobbing tears that made him shake, and caused his face to turn dark red. And then there are the few scant times between, a few steady tears easily concealed by a handkerchief, and a single blow of the nose.

As soon as the hangar door opened he was ashamed to admit that he never imagined that he’d see Pidge cry tears of joy over Matt. The sounds of hiccups and sobs combined with Pidge’s rare unbridled laughter are alien to the point of sending sharp unforgiving chills down his spine.  

But, the sight of two messy brown mops of hair becoming tangled together, hands interlocking, Matt getting knocked to the ground, and eyewear flying…Even the “oof” of Matt having the wind knocked out of him rips the emotions out of him by the root.

Pidge props himself up off the floor on one hand, the bulk of his weight still setting on Matt. “It’s you right? It’s really you and not some Druid Magic?”

“It’s me Katie.”

Hearing it makes him wince a little. He can only imagine how Pidge feels.

The siblings untangle, find their scattered glasses on the floor, realize that they have the wrong pair of glasses and trade.

Pidge stands aside, nearer to Matt’s ship. It’s the same blend of purple red that blends into black that the ship he arrived on Earth was, but smaller. There were so many unanswered questions within.

“Shiro,” His mouth goes slack and he take a few aimless steps forward before Shiro pulls him into an embrace.

“It’s good to see you again Matt,” he says as they part.

Much like himself and Pidge, Matt is not physically unchanged from his time with the Galra. His hair is much longer now, down past his shoulders. However, his bangs are trimmed neatly and rest in an arc across his forehead. Patchy orange red stubble dots his chin. He walks with a slight limp, “Not from the arena,” Matt assures him.

“Other leg remember? I’ll show you the scar when I’m out of my spacesuit. I broke my foot falling in an aircraft hangar. Never quite healed right.”

 _Days since extraction: thirty-six_ 08:07

“Aw man Hunk are you choppin’ onions I swear to god if you’re chopping onions,” Lance dabs at the corners of his eyes with his sleeves.

“It’s okay Lance because I’m totally crying too,” Hunk replies. He blows his nose into a hounds tooth handkerchief and then his eyes go wide with horror. “Ohmygod Pidge is gonna kill me,” he whispers into the balled up portion of the handkerchief in his hand.

“How could he in a moment like this?” Coran asks before plucking the handkerchief from Hunk’s hand and blowing his own nose in it.

And that’s how it goes for sometime, with most of the Castle’s inhabitants walking around in a daze constantly fighting the conflicting emotions to give Pidge and Matt space and simultaneously wanting to bask in the shared happiness that they all felt.

Keith suggests that they go to the control room and watch the video feed. With the sound turned off..and the picture kind of out of focus. So it’s not that weird.

It works for about five minutes until they decide that it is still weird, so they all go back to aimlessly milling about.

 _Days since (second) extraction: one_  08:11

“How Matt? How did you get out?”

Under Shiro’s suggestion, they’ve relocated to the lab. It’s a private space that Pidge is comfortable in. He can only hope that Matt will be comfortable there too.

Matt leans back on the armrest of the gray brown couch and nearly falls. He’s been meaning to fix that armrest for awhile, but it always gets pushed to the bottom of the list of lab duties. He rights himself and sticks to supporting his weight on the back of the couch instead. “You don’t remember Katie?”

“There’s a lot about being with the druids I do remember.” There’s Haggar’s grand hall, and Zarkon’s throne room….” His voice trails off slightly. He looks down at the metal plate in his chest. “And there is this. This hurt,” he runs his hand over it and then takes Matt’s hand in his own so he can feel.

Matt’s eyes go wide. “What happened?”

“Please tell me what I did first. There’s a lot in here,” he taps at his temple, “that isn’t correct. I’ve spent so much energy punishing myself over not understanding who you were. Like, I only got it after a memory transfer with Shiro…” He trails off again because there’s another difficult conversation tucked in there.

“We can come back to that.” Matt nods. “You never…verbally recognized me. You saw me twice. I tried talking to you and it was like…blank completely. You barely even acknowledged I was in the same room as you.”

“I remember that. When Shiro told-er explained to me my past memories it all fell into place. Who you were and why seeing you was important.”

“Then I saw you again. I was pulled to work on another project. I guess whatever you were working on. I don’t know if you somehow requested me, or it was chance.”

It goes quiet between the pair for a moment. Pidge stares at the big Altean clock on the far wall. Endlessly it counts down the ticks.  It’s probably wishful thinking on Matt’s part that their second meeting was purposeful.  He’s firmly convinced that during his time with Haggar, his mind was a big smooth obelisk waiting to be carved in her image.

 “But when the guards were away….They weren’t many when I was with you, I guess they trusted you…You gave me a ton of access codes. Without a word of explanation, I had codes for the cells, the hallways, the ship I have now…You gave me all of that on a reader no bigger than my palm.”

“No way. How? I didn’t even know my name.”

“Way…I wanted to take you with me, but you were gone the next day. Like, back with Haggar at Zarkon’s stronghold. I confirmed it through the very access codes you gave me. I’d like to think you planned that out too. You made sure I’d get out, even though you weren’t able to.”

Pidge tries to recall what Matt was talking about. He can see the workroom, illuminated in harsh fluorescent lights. He can see them working side by side, screen by screen. Maybe they’re working on the cyberterrorism machines. Maybe it’s just his mind trying to fill in the gaps where there is no information.   He can feel Matt’s sorrow filled gaze upon him, but for the life of him he cannot remember doing anything to acknowledge he knew who Matt was. “I don’t remember that…Giving you the codes.” Pidge pushes his hair away from his face so he can meet Matt’s gaze once again.

“What happened after that?”

“Long story short, I got out.” Suddenly his eyes light up beneath slightly bent copper rims. “You gave me a bomb too.”

“No. Way.”

“Yeah it was a little bit of plastic explosive. I used it to get out of my cell. Then the rest was pretty easy.  The access codes were everything. Before your project, I was never allowed near an unmonitored machine. It was hardware repair only, no code.”

“What happened after?”

“You included all of your protocols for those devices, so I went looking for you.”

“You deactivated the devices we recovered,” Pidge wrings his fingers in nervousness. He can feel the sting of panic building in his chest and he has to take a moment to visualize normal breathing.  

“In the CX-IVM system?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Your turn,” Matt pushes his glasses up his nose. 

“What do you mean?” Pidge replies.

“You said you’d tell me about that,” he points at Pidge’s chest. “And if you really don’t want to talk about it you can tell me why no one calls you Katie, or why you Shiro, and Keith are here. Or you could tell me what you’re doing in space, and why all you guys have giant robot lions.

“Oh well,” Pidge scratches the back of his head. Threading his fingers into his hair has always been a stress reliever. “First point: Galra drones killed me, and Hagar brought me back to life. Second point: I had to invent a new identity to get into the Garrison because of reasons. Now, I’m you know a transguy named Pidge…Point three: that’s actually the kind of complicated part,” he laughs nervously. Really the third point is _not_ the complicated part in the grander scheme of being confronted with your own death and the very shell of his identity, but he’s always been bad at delivering news tactfully.

He once tried to distract Matt from the only “B” he’d ever gotten on his report card by telling him their hamster died.

Yeah, Haggar deleted all the important stuff like his name, his entire gender identity, and the fact that he was stupid in love with Shiro, but let him keep that one.

“What happened to my sis-bro-sibling,” he finally decides. “Who rambled in endless detail about everything. I’d like that a lot right about now. Please and thank you.”

“Wait.” Pidge goes quiet for a moment. “Do you know where dad is?”

Now it’s Matt’s turn to squirm under his sibling’s gaze. He shifts his weight on the sofa from one leg to the other. “I have no idea.”

“Okay,” Pidge responds quietly. “That’s okay. You’re here now.”

Matt pulls him into another embrace.

“You’re here and that’s enough.” After a moment he pulls away slightly. Matt’s arm is still resting on his shoulder. “Okay, I will tell you everything. In detail.”

 _Days since (second) extraction: one_  12:31

Talking is exhausting. It takes over three hours to talk Matt through everything and keep himself calm in the process. Having them here helps. It makes him feel like it’s all been worth it, and for the time being he can’t be dragged down by Haggar’s long dark hand.

He has to take pause for a moment when he realizes that the coded messages he’d received months ago must have been sent by Haggar if Matt had never had access to a machine with network access. It makes his mind bend, compress, and steam to the point of hurting. When and how did Haggar get that detailed level of information on him?

It’s exhausting and it’s painful to hear everything that Matt has gone through after Shiro’s attempt to save him. To say that it’s been a long two years from the work farms, to the tech factories, to the inner circle of whatever discipline Haggar practices which combined the sciences with a strange intangible magic.

It’s exhausting, and he has to take a nap in the pile of blankets that were on the floor when he came back to the ship, and have arrived there ever since. But not before he logs Matt into every computer in the lab and gives him some vague directions throughout the castle.

He feels infinitely less terrible for taking a nap when he wakes up a few hours later to see Matt passed out, face first in a puddle of drool on lab’s the control console. His long hair shrouds his face entirely, and Pidge can’t help but bite back a laugh as he pushes the hair away from his brother’s face.

 _Days since (second) extraction: one_  23:11

“It feels like I’m doing something wrong,” Pidge says as he sets up his white pieces across the chessboard. “Since I left Earth, I haven’t played with anyone other than Shiro…I think.” He second guesses for a moment because there might have been a stray game on a random stop over or planet, but he seriously doubts it.

“Yeah,” Matt raises and eyebrow over his glasses rims. Pidge had tried to straighten them out the best he could. They sit more evenly on his face, but he couldn’t quite get out the dent in the left rim near the top. It jutted out slightly form the lens, but it was small and he suspected that only he could notice. “What’s going on there?”

“I have no idea what you mean dear brother.” Instantly Pidge’s ego is torn in half. On one hand he feels like himself for the first time in…literally months. The holes in memory don’t matter quite so much when he has _lots_ of source material to go off of. There’s a certain point well before either of them had joined the Garrison that is completely untouched.

“The looks the two of you give each other are heated enough to burn holes through an emergency class spacesuit.”

On the other hand there’s _another_ arduous story there. All he really wanted to do was put Matt in his place for the first time in over a decade. He’s pretty sure the last time was the incident where he finished his equations before him at the dinner table.

“Whatever, I’m not going to go all super over protective older brother on you. You’re your own person, and for the record I think you made a pretty good choice.

 They move their pawns the allotted spaces forward in the opening move. “I guess I should tell you. I have someone now too.”

Before Pidge can even reply, “it’s not like that,” he kicks the table in shock and threatens to send all of the pieces flying off the board onto the table and the floor. “That’s way more interesting than semi-sentient lions. Spill.”

“Uh okay.” Pidge looks at him in the dimmed fluorescent lighting of the lab. He’s rejected a haircut, but said yes to shaving the scant patches of fuzz off of his face. His voice is undeniably deeper now.  “His name is Ym. He’s a physician who I’ve tried to teach programming….He has dark blue skin with white hair…We met in prison, so you know he's the kind of guy that mom would love. He liked your bomb.”

“He liked my bomb?” Pidge mouths in confusion. “You mean he got out with you?”

“I got my whole cell out, and I just happen to be pretty good friends with them by now. I can’t rid the world of cyberterrorism drones alone,” and as if to spite her and maintain control of the board and their almost two decade long rivalry, he makes his next move on the board. “My biggest regret is not having the time to get everyone out.”

“Oh wow….Wait, do they know where you are?”

“Yeah, I sent them a message while you were out. I’m free for a few days, provided the rest of the fleet stays off Galra radar.”

“Fleet!?”

“Yeah, It’s not just bad code making one small ship look like ten big ones. I actually have like..five small ships. We make them look like fifty big Galra ones with minovsky particle manipulation.”

Pidge’s eyes are wide and for the first time in a long time he’s at a complete loss for what to do on the board. “You and your friends are trying to fix my fuck-up?”

“We all owe you our lives Pidge.” Pidge tries not to notice how Matt has to stop and take a breath before he says the name. “Looks it’s the least I can do if you’re out saving the universe.”

“Yeah….saving the universe. About that…”

 _Days since (second) extraction: seven_  05:49

“You know I kind of want to run away with Matt and deactivate my doom machines with him and his boyfriend and his friends right?”

No response.

“Whatever, you’re not buying it because I’m not completely buying it.” He would’ve never imagined that the other six castle dwellers would ever hold a candle to Matt and Dad, but they do. Where Matt and Dad were once the sun and the moon, he has six consistent stars to focus upon nightly. He’s a part of something bigger now, and it’s wedged firmly between heart, scar tissue, and druid magic.

“You know that I’ve never been completely sold on this whole defender of the universe shtick right?”

Again more silence.

“You know that it’s not about you, or Volton, or the universe. It’s because someone’s very convincing.”

The silence. It’s deafening.

“So Allura really bothers you, and you won’t shut up. You don’t mind me and I get a whole lot of nothing. I don’t understand where you get off.”

Pidge takes the freight elevator down, away from the green lion’s vacant and unassuming face. When he hits the bottom of the hangar he takes the express line into the cockpit. As soon as he hits the chair it’s moving forward into the cockpit. Everything lights up right away and in an instant he has a flash of a memory complete, contextual and confirmed real.

He’s on the Sloth planet with Shiro. He meets green for the first time. She’s warm and inviting and wants him to be there.

He revs his hands against the main throttle controls and he can see the hangar runway light up in front of him from Green’s cameras.

“So you want me? What’s wrong with Allura? She’s nicer. Smells nicer, looks nicer…” But it’s undeniable that the lion does. His hands are pulled like magnets to steel to the acceleration paddles. His conscious booms with the lion’s thoughts. _“Right.”_  And “ _Mine”_ and “ _Whole.”_

“Come ON Pidgeon, you’re gonna miss it!”

“Maybe I want to,” he makes sure to say into a muted comm. It’s a boldface lie that’s cut out of the raw emotions and jagged reactions he’s felt in the past week, but he lets it sit for a moment on top of all the other strange emotions he feels.

 _Days since (second) extraction: three_  10:49

“I think we can fix some of your issues with this,” Shiro opens the bay to the secondary hangar for the second time in almost as many days and gestures to the large gray, rounded edge ship that’s docked next to Matt’s smaller one. “Considering the rest of our options, it doesn’t get used much.”

“Then why do you even have that?” Matt asks in a tone that suggests he’s trying very hard to sound unimpressed. He’s looking the transport ship up and down like it’s the sixth lion, and rightfully so. Compared to what he rode in on, it’s immaculate. It’s got a few photon canons that are factory issue. The guns on board are designed for the very ship they were attached to.

“He cheated his way into it,” Pidge says with a confidence that has been unmatched since he woke up in a pod with a chest full of metal.

“I won it in a card game,” Shiro corrects. “Fair and square.”

“You mean I can just have this?” Matt phrases it like a question, but he’s already got his hand held tablet whipped out and his palm on the entry panel.

“Absolutely,” Shiro replies. “Like I said, it doesn’t get much use here.”

“You need a welcome home gift. Whatever home means now,” Pidge supplies.

“It will be nice to have someone on our side for once,” Shiro adds. 

“Oh man, Ym’s gonna love this.” Matt’s eyes go wide as the cargo door springs open after few taps on the entry panel.

Pidge and Shiro show him inside, through the small hangar where he can store his current ship alongside a few others if he so chooses, and into the control room. Pidge hates to admit how it’s perfect for a band of rebels trying to undo ten millennia of wrongdoing without the frills of Alten might.

“It’s gonna need to go faster though. Can you help me Pidge?”

And before he can even formulate a coherent reply he finds himself forging an intake manifold to intergalactic specifications with Matt.

Pidge has the plans drafted in no time flat. Matt begins to forge the device out of electrum alloy. Before they’re an hour into crafting the pneumatic jump valve, Hunk has decided to help.

 _Days since (second) extraction: seven_  05:49

“So you want me? What’s wrong with Allura? She’s nicer. Smells nicer, looks nicer…”

“Come ON Pidgeon, you’re gonna miss it!” Lance barks over the shared channel.

“Maybe I want to,” he makes sure to say into a muted comm. Nevertheless, he engages the launch sequence by typing in a string of digits into Green’s primary interface. In an instant he’s pressed back into the control chair by G forces.

Upon launch he’s surrounded, not only by the four other lions, but the infamous transport ship, two miniscule fighter ships, and two more hodgepodge runners much like the one Matt arrived on.

“Pidge,” Matt comes over the private channel first. In a rare shift of inter-craft communication, he’s on the video screen. “In the fighters are the twins Jana and Jama. In the first runner is Loro the arms dealer…And finally, in the second transport is Ym. Everyone, this is my brother Pidge.”

The channel goes silent as Matt switches to the shared channel and introduces team Voltron to team Holt. 

Pidge can’t stop staring at the panel that bears Ym’s image. He’s much like Matt described, dark blue skin, crisp white hair pulled into tight braids with big pink eyes. There is so much he wants to ask…but there is no time.

All ten spacecraft rest gently along the inky backdrop of space for a moment before they’re pulled into the wormhole summoned by Allura.

After all, it’s not every day they have such a large and skilled team available to take down the sleeper drones scattered across the galaxy.

It’s selfish. Pidge realizes somewhere between being pulled expelled from the wormhole and taking formation next to Matt _. It’s enough_ he decides when they approach the atmosphere of the most recently affected planet. They’ve had time together, unadulterated by Galra influence. _It’s enough_ to know that they have the upcoming mission together.


	9. Chapter 9

_Days since (second) extraction: eleven_  15:24

“Are you okay?” It’s rare to see Pidge blowing off steam in the training room. He spent a fair amount of time doing it, so did Lance and Keith. Pidge, however, Pidge regulated emotions by having a piece of candy from his secret stash or a really long nap.

Even during mandatory team drills he was the last to arrive and the first to dart up and leave.

But with the newly acquired muscle mass, and the newly acquired void in Pidge’s life, he supposed that habits change.

“Yeah,” Pidge doesn’t even look up from where he’s wailing on the gladiator.

From the first night they’d had Pidge back, Shiro had noticed the changes in his body. He was leaner now, and every inch of skin wrapped compact muscle. These weren’t earned like his own after months and months of rigorous use.

These came from changes in diet, activity, and maybe even hormones. There was no denying that Pidge had a more masculine form after his rescue.

Shiro looked from his arm to Pidge and back again and wondered what other mysteries their bodies contained.

“I know,”

Pidge decks the Gladiator’s jaw sending it flying. It’s a harsh reminder of the Pidge he was confronted with during the rescue. Unyielding, combative, tightly compact rage which encased a dangerous mind.

“That he…that they couldn’t stay with us. We can do a lot more with help, and we have our own mission more urgent then CTS drones.” Cyber Terrorism Stealth Drones: it’s a neutral name given to the devices by Hunk when he was sick of calling them “those things.”

 “Yesterday was a shining example of that,” Pidge continued by pinning the gladiator when it was down. He sank to his knees in a way that was stiff and disinterested. He placed both palms on it’s shoulders pinning it to the padded floor. 

Both teams had been working in tandem on disabling the CTS devices when Allura called out over the comm. “Palladins, I hate to pull you from an ongoing mission, but there is an item of particular concern occurring back at the castle.”

Choppy discussion with the castle reveals that Allura and Coran are being dogged by a larger Galra ship and a small cluster of fighters. The combination of single battleship delivering large debilitating blows combined with smaller ships that could dodge and weave, and fight small holes in tight defenses meant bad news for the castle. “Voltron Team, we need to retreat.”

He issues the command without a single thought.

There’s a tense silence over the channel between the ten of them, until Matt finally speaks, “We’ve got this. Don’t worry.” 

Pidge didn’t even have the time to give a proper goodbye.

By the time the Galra were quashed, Allura’s time and energy was best dedicated to repairing the castle’s damaged systems. Matt and his crew had found another lead on _more_ CTS orbiting several planets in a nearby system.

So, the ragtag crushed together team Voltron, and Matt’s motley team of circumstance parted ways.

Under the insistence that they’d only go after CTS devices that were marked as activated but not in use. Under the additional insistence that they’d enter each location of planned extraction into a log that Pidge had instant access to.

 “I’m pretty sick of feeling empty,” and as if to emphasize his point he pushed himself up on his palms and backed away from the gladiator before the full seven seconds required for a pin to register as a proper win. “For a week and a half or so I felt so normal.”  He pushes the oversized sweater sleeves over his hands and rubs them together.

There was no way he was cold after pinning a drone twice his size to the ground. The heat is already cranked all the way up, and he’s clearly been at it for awhile.

Shiro pushes back the shock of seeing Pidge best the Gladiator on level 5 like it was nothing. Last he’d seen he struggled on level 2 without weapons.

It’s undeniably true that outside of the few days he’d spent with Matt, it’s the most animated he’s seen Pidge in _months_.

“Do you think you can get that feeling back without having him immediately nearby?”

“Maybe,” Pidge snatches the water bottle from Shro’s hand and latches onto the nozzle. He takes one long continuous draught from the container before shoving it back into Shiro’s hands. “Something tells me I probably can, or you wouldn’t have phrased it in a question for me to consider carefully.”

“Maybe,” Shiro says in imitation. “But you’re clearly not in the mood to _think_ about much of anything. Are you up for giving him a break?” He gestures to the drone.

“It’s been awhile.” Pidge screws up his face like he’s halfway between remembering vividly and drawing a huge blank in the past. “Hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Shiro replies lamely for a lack of better response to give. He has to admit that thinking of the last time they engaged in hand to hand training alone makes his stomach do flip-flops beneath his skin. He’s dreamed of it an infinite amount of times, and although the circumstances are completely different it feels raw and impactful. Pidge is here, physically and mentally, and it’s so rare he would do anything to hold onto it for even a few seconds longer.

“Alright, let’s go then,” Pidge responds in the artificial tone of boredom that Shiro lives for.

They circle around each other gingerly a few times trying to sum each other up.

Shiro moves in first tying to knock Pidge off his feet with a swift kick. He’s used it to bring Pidge down countless times. He’s always worried about his left and right flanks and ultimately leaves the lower half of his body defenseless.

To his shock, Pidge darts out of the way and tries to deliver an open palmed smack to his chest. He misses.

Shiro tries to grab him by the wrist and bring him down, but Pidge rolls off his chest and goes for his shoulder.

He can feel the slight weight of Pidge pushing frantically at him, but he widens his stance and holds firm. He’d hate to admit it, but if Pidge were a larger man, he’d be knocked down on his ass in no time flat.   

He goes in for a jab and Pidge takes it to the chin without even flinching.

It’s a blow he’d never deliver before. It’s a blow Pidge would never take without incident before.

In a flash Pidge grabs his wrist, and he realizes he’s made a mistake. At this point his biological arm is his weak point, and Pidge knows it.  Pidge grabs him firmly above the elbow and moves relentlessly to take him down.

It’s a crash of bodies and the feel of the mat beneath his torso before he realizes that Pidge has somehow unseated him and has him pinned.

“Shall I count to ten?” Pidge asks with a cheeky grin on his face. His glasses have been knocked off one ear so that they dangle limply down over his nose.

“We’ll chalk it up as a win for you,” Shiro replies.

Pidge gets off of him, and now it’s his turn to take a long drink from the water bottle. Suddenly, something from deep below is dredged up from the surface. It’s something that he’s desperately tried to bury ever since he decided it was a good idea to sneak a few drinks with Ryou after Yumi Yammamoto’s party and his father had him transferred to military school the following Monday.

Still rebellion laps at the edges of his conscious like a rising tide. He’s never been able to shake it, just mask it most of the time.

“Let’s get out of here,” he suggests while wiping his face down with a towel. Despite the fact that he wants to discount Pidge’s victory due to shock alone, his body cannot conceal the visible signs of strain: sweat, elevated heartbeat, quickened breaths.

“What, you afraid of losing again?” Pidge quips while simultaneously wiping his own skin down. “Or is it harder to come to terms with the fact that it might not have been due to chance?”

“Neither,” he replies firmly. “I’m sour about the way the mission went down too. This method of blowing off steam is getting old fast.”

“So what else are we gonna do? Read? Play chess? There’s not much else to do.”

“I know. I’m not suggesting we do something here. There’s a free system nearby. Let’s really get out of here.”

“You mean it?” Pidge’s eyes go wide beneath the frames.

“Sure, why not? Name the place.”

“There any slot machine parlors nearby?”

“Do you even have any money?” Shiro asks with legitimate interest. Despite seeing Pidge perform side jobs for negligible amounts of cash in the past he’s never seen him actually pay for anything.

“Not a cent,” he admits. “But I wouldn’t mind wailing on a slot machine. It was one of the few things my mother and I could agree on.”

Shiro can tell that if it’s coming from Pidge’s natural memory it must be buried deep in the past. It’s also one of the first times he’s ever mentioned his mother. “Don’t they have underage gambling laws where you’re from?”

“Right,” Pidge rolls his eyes. “Matt was teasing you about something….getting kicked out of card parlors as a kid and pissing your dad off?”

“No slots tonight,” Shiro reiterates.

“Fine.”

  _Days since (second) extraction: eleven_  17:15

In the end they take a smaller ship out and roam around not quite mutually agreeing or disagreeing on anything.  In the end, they decide on something that is much more affordable than pounding a slot machine. With a few bottles of dragon fang wine in tow, they end up in a dirty old cinema that looks like something out of one of the post apocalyptic films playing inside. There are large black marble columns on the outside in various states of decay. There are even a few missing.

Pidge sticks to the carpet. Not in a, “shoes slightly stuck to the floor” like on earth kind of way, but in a, “has to have Shiro rip him from a five inch deep puddle of amorphous goop” in the lobby.

The silver lining is that no-one tells them to ditch the bottles of wasp fang wine he’d picked up at the convenience store down the block. The theater is mostly empty too.

When Shiro dragged him in, he wanted to ask why this exactly counted as blowing off steam. Wasp fang might help, but passively drinking never helped anyone blow off steam, just generate more. The fact that it’s an interactive film more than makes up for it. After the usher scans their tickets, they’re handed a pair of sticky neon guns. They shoot little more than pink colored bursts of light. Pidge would be completely delighted, if he weren’t afraid that his hand would stick to the gun like his feet did to the lobby floor.

As the credits roll, he moves to turn on his ocular overlay to translate but Shiro grabs his hand. “What are you doing? It’s going to be much better if we have no idea what’s going on,” he insists.

So he complies.

“Pew Pew,” Pidge mutters as he shoots another on screen alien. This one is big and orange and it’s tentacles reach out from one end of the screen to another. A few shots register on the scorekeeping screen on his gun before the hero shows up and kicks it in the head. “Looks like takoyaki is back on the menu boys.”

“Oh save me save me.” Shiro mocks as the camera pans to the hero’s love interest. “I’ll only get captured again because I’m a flimsy plot device.”

She’s a real looker with three breasts and one eye. Within the first half of the film she’s been captured twice and fallen through an airlock once. “Maybe stop mocking her and shoot the restraints off her wrists,” Pidge suggests while pointing at the screen.

Shiro does in time with the film, and her bonds are released as she falls into the hero’s arm.

After the love interest falls to a crumpled pile on the floor, she’s pulled up by the hero into a wet and totally gross looking kiss. Their lips don’t even meet, it’s just one face devouring another and both he and Shiro quickly lose interest.

“Not as good if there’s nothing to shoot with.”

“That’s why we brought reinforcement,” Pidge replies taking a swig from the bright red bottle of wasp fang.

“I can’t hold my liquor like you can.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever let me assess that,” Pidge snaps back.

Between them it grows quite for a moment. There’s a gratuitous love scene on the screen, and Pidge would give almost anything for the conversation to pick back up or there to be another bang bang shoot em up scene. “I’m not mad at you anymore,” Pidge says under his breath and hopes that the thunderous speakers drown him out.

“I figured as much,” Shiro replies in a tone that’s equally hushed. “I’m glad.”

Pidge drains the last of his bottle of wine and he can feel the heat of it creep down his spine, and take up residence across his cheeks. In the back of his mind he can hear Shiro telling him, “alcohol lowers inhibitions, so stop it,” but this is different.

Pidge ignores the fact that the pace has shifted and it’s back to shooting. Shiro’s toy gun is cocked in his cybernetic arm. He prefers it that way because quite frankly, he’s had so many hard conversations in the past few months, it’ really okay if whatever gravity this one contains is shot up by a toy laser.

“Thank you for everything,” it’s lame but he doesn’t have the energy to say anything else. If he has to think about his emotions in critical detail one more time he’s going to scream.

Shiro takes a swig from his bottle. Then, his biological hand reaches over towards Pidge. Maybe he’s had a little too much himself. Shiro’s large hand encapsulates his own around the toy gun, and he aims their conjoined hands at the screen. He pulls the trigger by moving his index finger over Pidge’s. “You’re welcome Pidge.” For a moment he’s shooting with double guns at the screen.

Pidge wriggles away indicating that he wants to start taking his own shots.

 _Days since (second) extraction: eleven_  20:51

After the movie, they hit the streets in search of food. They’re both a little less than sober, and something on the stomach would be nice.

“Seafood,” Pidge demands. “We just watched an agonizing movie about a guy punching a bunch of fish to save his crappy girlfriend. I must extract my revenge.”

“Alright, let’s see what we can find.”

Pidge hadn’t turned on the ocular overlay in the theater, and as far as he knows hasn’t turned it on since. He keeps asking for rough translations whenever an oddly shaped neon sign catches his eye. The language has the same root as Galra symbols, so he doesn’t _need_ to get his own device out.  “That one is a _salch_ stand. It’s almost like ceviche.”

“What’s ceviche?” Pidge asks as he tries to locate the stand in the endless throngs of people out on the street. “ His face rotates in almost a complete half circle looking for the stand, and his glasses are coated in a barrage of multicolored lights.

“It’s seafood. You’ll like it.”

The stand has small counter and a few seats facing the street, two of which they take. It reminds him of summer vacations visiting his grandmother in Hakata and stuffing himself with ramen and running off to the nearest Taito Station as soon as he was done.

Pidge taps at the communicator on his wrist a few times while they wait for the shop keeper to serve up their plates. “It’s Matt,” Pidge says with a grin. “Looks like we gave him that transport just in time. The skipper he arrived on lost starter this afternoon, and they have no money to fix it.”

“Given the state it was in, it isn’t even worth fixing.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Pidge replied. “Hey what was the name of that movie. I want to tell Matt to go see it.”

“I have no idea,” Shiro replies.

The shopkeeper places to plates in front of them. He’s got lavender skin with long thick black arm hair. It’s almost funny in comparison to the dainty plates he places before them. They’re filled with small white pieces of meat mixed in with local herbs and a savory fruit that Shiro can’t remember the name of either.

Pidge takes a bite and chews thoughtfully for a moment. “Hey Shiro. There’s something that’s really been bothering me lately. Something like a memory that I just can’t place.” Reluctantly Pidge moves a bite of the fruit near his lips. His worried expression softens and he immediately goes for another piece. “You and me talking about soup. I’m pretty sure that happened. What was that about?”

Shiro can feel the drink he just took race from his mouth to the back of his throat, and it threatens to come out his nose if he’s not careful.

 _Days since (second) extraction: twenty_  04:12

Having most of his memories back helps. There’s fewer and fewer things that he draws a blank on. More often than not, the bulk of his frustrations stem from knowing strings of the past, but not being able to fit them all together. Having most of them back means he’s been able to make peace with Shrio.

Having most of his memories back makes it easier for him to understand the reasons behind both of their actions, and realize that his recovery has been a near impossible burden for Shiro to bear.

Knowing that Matt is alive and safe helps too. His guilt is all but absolved. They talk through text messages constantly leading both of them to question the other if they can get any work done. Each morning they send highly encrypted yet still imprecise (for security) coordinates to see if they’re somewhere close to each other.

Turns out the universe is big, and in the few weeks since his departure, they haven’t been.

Being near the green lion also helps. In those moments that he feels powerless, he can climb in the cockpit and feel strong. It’s a tangible reminder that unlike so many souls across the universe he has the power to actually do something to change it.

These things help, but they don’t make the pain go away completely.

This is the third time this week he’s woken up from his makeshift bed in the lab clawing at the hard place where metal met skin. It makes him rip off his shirt, forces the cool air in the lab to envelop his skin which is coated in cold sweat. Something, _his heart?”_ Is pounding in his chest and makes his veins feel like they’re going to pop out of his skin.

This time he can’t even remember what the panic inducing dream was about. Usually when this happens, he’s able to cycle through the relevant details and calm himself down. He can’t remember the details, but a feeling in the bottom of his gut tells him it’s one of the few things that he can’t comfort himself on. Matt’s words, “I have no idea,” ring in his head and echo between his ears.

 _Dad_. It’s about Dad.

Logically, he knows that he’s made _so_ much progress in the past few months. He can’t punish himself over this.

Hastily he throws his shirt back on and leaves the lab.

Shiro’s room is empty. At this point he should know better. He turns on his heel and starts in the opposite direction towards the starboard library.

 _Days since (second) extraction: twenty_  04:15

“Shiro,” his voice so soft it’s barely a whisper, but he doesn’t know if Shiro is triggered by being woken up. “Shiro please. I’m sorry.”

Shiro shifts slightly on the cream white sofa, but remains unconscious.

“Shiro,” and against his better judgement, he place a hand gently against his prosthetic.

Shiro’s eyes flutter open gently like a fairy tale heroine. That must make Pidge the world’s worst prince.

“Shiro, I’m sorry. I had a dream, but it wasn’t a dream. I don’t remember anything. I just woke up thinking about my dad.”

Shiro sits up and scoots over before rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

The more Pidge thinks about it, the more awful he feels. Shiro doesn’t sleep much at all, and he seemed very at ease just now. “Sorry for waking you. I just felt so scared and-“

“Pidge,” he interrupts. “It’s okay. Sit.”

Pidge obeys, and immediately he’s wrapped into the warm and all-encompassing glow of Shiro’s embrace. It’s becoming more and more familiar as the days progress, and Pidge is glad. It seems to be the one thing that can clear his mind instantly.

“Does that ever happen to you? You wake up and you can’t put your finger on it. You’re keyed up and something is wrong.”

“All the time.”

“Shiro,” he leans into the metal fingers that are rubbing at his neck. If he doesn’t give him some kind of non-verbal affirmation, Shiro will stop and pull away. “Are we ever going to be fixed?”

“We’re not like machines Pidge. It’s not that simple.”

He can feel the soft vibration of Shiro’s chest as he speaks, and this too soothes him despite the actual words that are being spoken.

“I promise you though, it does ease up over time. I don’t wake up with those feelings as much.”

“Promise?” It’s childish, but he can’t help but cling to every word that Shiro says when it comes to recovery. When he’s stretched thin and vulnerable like this, he wants to wring every last word out of him that he can.

“You’re not alone in this Pidge.” He kisses the top of Pidge’s forehead where skin meets hairline. “I promise.”

 


End file.
